Stephanie Cosme, 32, was working for Sumaria Systems, a contractor working for the US Navy, in California on Sept. 7, 2023, when she was killed by an airplane propeller.

Her family, after waiting for eight months to read the official report, filed suit against Sumaria Systems and its director Derek Kirkendall for alleged Hispanic and gender discrimination plus a hostile workplace that led to Cosme’s death by propeller blade.

On its website, Sumaria Systems states it “delivers leading, technical, engineering, software, professional and enterprise networking solutions to the U.S. Department of Defense and Government Agencies for the largest and most sophisticated unmanned systems.”

At the time of her death, Cosme had been working in ground testing an MQ-9A Reaper drone at Gray Butte Airfield in California. The US Navy describes the drone as an “armed, multi-mission, medium-altitude, long-endurance remotely piloted aircraft that is employed primarily against dynamic execution targets and secondarily as an intelligence collection asset.”

After reviewing the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board report eight months after the fatal event, Cosme’s family filed suit against Sumaria Systems, the company running the Navy project, for allegedly imposing gender discrimination and a hostile workplace “campaign.”

Stpehanie Cosme was of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, and the lawsuit claims that discrimination created unsafe work conditions that led to her untimely death.

In court documents, the siblings of Ms. Cosme said that after reading the Navy report about the incident and hearing from witness testimony, they believe that director Derek Kirkendall of Sumaria Systems allegedly had a history of gender discrimination and “hostility” against Hispanic workers at the company.

Cosme was a testing engineer working for the Air Force contractor at the time. The family said, in legal documents, that on the night of their sister’s death, a U.S. Air Force official met them at the hospital and told them that Cosme was not following protocol when she was killed and not following instructions. The family strongly disagrees.

In legal documents, Cosme’s siblings said the evidence shows the trainer at the job did not properly instruct Cosme on how to safely take data readings from the drone, plus other issues.

The official report did not allude to any gender or race discrimination as contributing factors that led to Cosme’s death. However, as the suit claims, the witness in the official report shows that Kirkendall “deliberately” isolated Cosme from fellow staff on the day she died on-site and did not inform the ground crew what her specific tasks were that day.

In the suit, the plaintiffs allege Kirkendall used anti-Hispanic slurs against Cosme, calling her “lazy.”

The lawsuit includes purported evidence regarding the hostile workplace conditions Cosme encountered, based on a prior complaint filed against Kirkendall by her predecessor. The predecessor to Cosme’s job was another Latina, who quit her job after filing a complaint about alleged anti-Hispanic treatment by Kirkendall. The complaint claims Cosme suffered from similar bias.

Evidence included in court papers includes the written testimony of another testing engineer who told the Air Force investigator that Kirkendall told him he was “hazing” Cosme, forcing her to stand by the aircraft for hours under the sun for no important reason and isolating her from any communication with other staff in the control station.

No colleagues, according to the Air Force report, knew what Cosme’s role was during the drone testing or that Kirkendall planned to tell her to approach the aircraft when its propeller was still running.

In a statement issued by the Air Force Materiel Command regarding Cosme’s death, the service branch pointed to two factors it says “substantially contributed” to the fatal incident. These included a lack of communication between military personnel and the contractor, along with tests that were rushed through because of prior cancellations and delays.

According to an Associated Press report, civil rights attorney Debra Katz, who is one of the attorneys representing the family, said that how the defendant treated Cosme is the “way gender harassment works when women try to break into male-dominated fields. They make it much more difficult and they often make them feel unsafe. Everybody knows he’s hazing her, and this is so endemic to the culture that no one tells him to stop. We felt this suit was really important to name it for what it is. This is gender discrimination that led to somebody’s death.”

Kirkendall told the Air Force Investigator he was shocked when he learned that Cosme’s predecessor filed a hostile environment complaint since he believed they had an “excellent rapport.”

Regarding the predecessor complaint, Sumaria Systems had “concluded that it was unfounded.”

In addition to the previous complaint and possible involuntary discharge of a female Hispanic worker, the lawsuit alleges that two male Hispanic employees also quit Sumaria Systems because of Kirkendall’s workplace behavior.

Attorneys for Sumaria Systems and Kirkendall said in a statement that the suit’s accusations are untrue, and that “the defendants deny any wrongdoing or liability whatsoever.” Furthermore, they added, they will “address the allegations of the lawsuit in court through the legal process.”