Maryland University Settles Lawsuit Over Violent Bat Attack

A state university has agreed to a settlement with a Baltimore man who was partially blinded after being attacked on campus by a student who later told authorities he killed and cannibalized another man.

Morgan State University in Baltimore last week agreed to pay Joshua Ceasar $185,000, according to Ceasar’s attorney Steven Silverman. The school has a $200,000 cap on legal settlements, Silverman said.

The settlement is subject to final approval by the state board of public works. Assistant Attorney General Corlie McCormick, who represents Morgan State, did not immediately return a call for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in February 2013, says that the school failed to protect Ceasar from Alex Kinyua, a student who attacked him in a dorm room with a bat wrapped in barbed wire and chains.

When Kinyua attacked Ceasar, both men were on campus for the 2012 Morgan State graduation. According to the lawsuit, Ceasar’s friends heard screams from a dorm room and discovered Kinyua standing over Ceasar holding knives. Ceasar spent ten days in the hospital.

Days after the bat attack, Kinyua told authorities that he killed and carved up 37-year-old Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie of Ghana, who had been staying with Kinyua’s family, and ate the man’s heart and part of his brain.

Kinyua pleaded guilty but not criminally responsible to both attacks and is being held in a maximum-security psychiatric facility.

Ceasar’s lawsuit said that Kinyua began displaying violent tendencies in 2011, but that the school failed to adequately respond to the danger he posed to the student body.

Silverman said Ceasar deserves “ten times more” than the state’s cap, but he said the settlement will help Ceasar begin to move on.

“Josh is a really nice kid from a really nice family. I can only hope that he can put this nightmare behind him,” Silverman said. “Being able to avoid trial and avoid reliving this is going to be psychological relief for him.”