Warning: This article may contain some distressing information.
A 13-year-old Brooklyn girl jumped to her death from the Brooklyn Bridge after being torn from her family and repeatedly failed by New York City’s child welfare system.
Jade Smith’s body was found in the East River in January 2023 - one day after she fled a foster home.
Her mother, Terri Nimmo, says her daughter’s death was the tragic result of negligence by the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), which she accuses of ripping apart her family, ignoring her daughter’s mental illness, and then trying to cover its tracks.
“ACS killed Jade Smith,” Nimmo declared in court papers. “Over the course of ACS’s 20-month assault on the Nimmo family, the Nimmos lost their home, their jobs, and their 13-year-old daughter. They will never recover.”
.jpg_Se53bH?tr=f-webp,q-75)
A Child Failed by the System
Jade's loved ones described her as “an extremely gifted, creative, passionate child” and “a prolific artist, always drawing and painting.” But behind her talent was a long struggle with severe mental illness.
Jade was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociative identity disorder, and depression, and had been hospitalized multiple times since age nine.
She hallucinated a “faceless black figure” at school and often woke up screaming, convinced she was covered in bugs. By the age of 12, she had attempted suicide several times.
Her family says those details, well-documented by her doctors and therapists, were ignored when ACS got involved in 2022.
A Misunderstanding That Tore a Family Apart
The family’s nightmare began in July 2022, when Jade told her mother that someone had entered her bedroom at night and groped her.
At one point, Jade claimed her stepfather, Richard Nimmo, was responsible, even though he was working overnight as a security guard.
Terri Nimmo immediately informed both him and the girl’s biological father, explaining that Jade had also said she’d been dreaming about a boy she liked when the alleged incident occurred.
Weeks later, Jade repeated the claim to a friend, whose parent contacted ACS. Caseworkers arrived that same day and launched what the family says became an “assault” on their lives.
According to the lawsuit, ACS never spoke with Jade’s therapist or psychiatrist, never reviewed her medical history, and did not attempt to confirm her medication regimen.
“ACS did not contact Jade’s therapist, psychiatrist, friends, or neighbors,” the complaint stated. “It did not even attempt to confirm what medications she was prescribed nor what she discussed with her therapist at an appointment she attended after the alleged incident.”
In September 2022, the agency filed a neglect petition accusing Jade’s stepfather of abuse, but allegedly omitted her “extensive” mental health history.
“And thus began the systematic dismantling by ACS of every source of love, security, and comfort in Jade’s young life,” the family wrote.
.jpg_3TThHp?tr=f-webp,q-75)
From Foster Care to Tragedy
Jade was first placed with a grandparent who lived in a single-room occupancy home and couldn’t handle her instability. She repeatedly ran away, but her family claims ACS ignored the warning signs.
Eventually, Jade was placed in a foster home. Her mother saw her for the last time on Christmas Day 2022. “As soon as Jade saw her mother, she ran into her arms and told her how much she loved her,” the lawsuit said.
Just weeks later, the teen ran away again, and on January 15, 2023, she fled her foster home. The next day, her body was recovered from the East River.
In the aftermath of the 13-year-old's death, the family claims ACS rushed “back-dated case notes” into their files and “dramatically escalated its intrusions, seemingly desperate to somehow retroactively justify its actions in separating the family".
The agency then reached out to Jade’s longtime therapist for the first time and began questioning her surviving sibling’s teachers and guidance counselor, allegedly searching for signs of neglect to shift blame.
The investigation dragged on for more than a year, forcing the bereaved family to respond to ACS’s constant demands.
“Neither parent was able to sustain their employment… Within months, the couple had lost not only their jobs but also their home. They moved into a shelter,” the lawsuit stated.
A year after Jade’s death, a caseworker showed up at the Nimmos’ home unannounced and asked if Jade was “out for the moment,” unaware she had died.
The mother said she “had nightmares and panic attacks about this cruel interaction for weeks”.
Demanding Justice
In February 2024, a family court judge cleared Jade’s parents of any wrongdoing and called the allegations against the stepfather “extremely difficult to believe".
The judge described Terri as “as attentive as a parent could have been to Jade’s considerable mental health needs.”
“There will be a reckoning,” the family vowed, as they seek unspecified damages from the city and multiple ACS employees.
ACS declined to comment on the lawsuit but issued a brief statement offering condolences: “The safety and well-being of New York City’s children and youth is our top priority. The loss of Jade Smith is a terrible tragedy. We offer our deepest condolences to the family."
For Jade’s family, that statement offers little comfort, as to them, the system that was supposed to protect their daughter instead destroyed her.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.