A 20-year-old woman identified in court papers only as L.P. has filed a lawsuit that puts a harsh spotlight on Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and a local travel track program. She alleges school officials and program leaders allowed a man she calls a "sexual predator" to coach students, and that his access to her through school and athletics led to repeated sexual abuse when she was a child. The complaint says the abuse began when L.P. was about 14 and continued until she moved out of the district in 2021. The suit names coach Daszmar Lammon Lockhart, Lock Nation Athletics and multiple CMS employees, including at least four principals, and seeks monetary damages.
What the lawsuit alleges
The civil complaint, filed under the initials L.P., accuses Lockhart of grooming, sexually assaulting and raping her beginning in spring 2019, when she was in eighth grade. According to the filing, some of the alleged abuse started under the guise of "therapeutic" massages during which inappropriate touching occurred. The lawsuit also claims that as L.P. got older, Lockhart coerced her into sending explicit photos and that some of the conduct continued throughout her high school years. Those allegations are laid out in coverage from MyFOX8.
Lockhart's criminal history
Lockhart was arrested in September 2024 and charged with multiple child sex offenses, including statutory rape, indecent liberties with a child and statutory sex offenses, according to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department news release cited in local coverage. Investigators also seized his phone as part of the probe. Reporting notes that Lockhart had a prior conviction in 2019 related to exposing himself to a minor in Cabarrus County. The Charlotte Observer has detailed those criminal allegations and history.
Court calendar and next steps
The lawsuit states that L.P. filed her claims against the district and several individuals this month. A Mecklenburg County court was scheduled to take up a motion to dismiss the complaint on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 21, according to the reporting. For now, the case sits at an early procedural stage, where motions from the defendants, including any effort to toss the suit, will determine how quickly and in what form the allegations are tested in court. MyFOX8 has summarized the initial scheduling.
District response and background checks
When local reporters asked whether Lockhart had ever been on the CMS payroll, district officials told one station he was not an employee and may instead have been involved as a volunteer. The district declined to say whether a volunteer background check was completed, citing confidentiality rules. That exchange was reported by WSOC-TV. This new complaint lands against a backdrop of prior civil claims over how CMS handled reports of sexual misconduct, including a negligence lawsuit over a 2019 child sex abuse case that drew broader scrutiny to the district's practices.
Legal context
Civil suits against school systems in North Carolina often come down to two key questions: what school officials knew or reasonably should have known about a potential threat, and whether they took reasonable steps to protect students. In recent years, courts have allowed negligence claims against CMS to proceed in cases with similar themes, rather than shutting them down at the outset. A report on earlier litigation notes that parents have been allowed to pursue negligence lawsuits against the district in other child sex assault cases, underscoring how judges increasingly let these disputes play out in civil court. Carolina Journal has covered that precedent.
