OPINION OF THE COURT
Memorandum.
The order of the Appellate Division should be reversed, with costs, and the case rеmitted to that court for consideration of issues raised but not determined on apрeal.
On June 3, 1988, plaintiff’s sixth grade class, along with five other fifth and sixth grade classes, attended a drug awareness fair at a park near the school. * Sponsored by defendаnt Board of Education and the police department, the fair permitted students tо walk through the park on their own and participate in program activities that interested them. Seven teachers and four or five aides supervised the group.
Before the outing, plaintiff’s teacher told his class where to meet so that they might return to school together. Plaintiff *946 testified that at around noon, her teacher gave her permission to leave the park, with friends, for lunch at a nearby pizzeria. At 12:30 p.m., in preparation for return to school, plaintiffs teacher took a head count of his students and discovered that plaintiff was missing. He looked for her in the park, but did not inform any оf the other teachers or police officers providing security at the fair thаt he could not locate her.
Plaintiff’s teacher and his class left the park at 1:00 p.m., without plaintiff, but stopped first at her house before returning to school. He told plaintiff’s mother (who usually met her daughter at school dismissal time to accompany her hоme) of the disappearance but he did not disclose the incident to school officials.
Meanwhile, at about 12:50 p.m., plaintiff was in the pizzeria when another student told her that her class had left. She hurried to the park but could not find them, and she started to walk home alone. At approximately 1:30 p.m., a block from the park, plaintiff met John Gibson (a student at the nearby junior high school), Chivelle Stallworth and a third boy whose name shе did not know. Gibson and Stallworth began accosting her on the street and threatened to hurt her if she left. They then took her to Stallworth’s house where they raped and sodomized her for 21h hours. When they released her, plaintiff ran home and told her mother what had оccurred. Plaintiff’s mother, who had just informed the school of the disappearanсe, then called the police. Gibson and Stallworth were arrested later that dаy. Each pleaded guilty to first degree rape.
After a jury verdict in plaintiff’s favor, the Appellate Division, one Justice dissenting, reversed and dismissed the complaint. The cоurt held that as a matter of law, the rape was an unforeseeable supersеding event absolving defendant of liability (
Where third-party criminal acts intervene betweеn defendant’s negligence and plaintiff’s injuries, the causal connection may be severed, precluding liability
(see, Kush v City of Buffalo,
On this record, we cannot say that the intervening act of rape was unforeseeable as a matter of law. A rational jury
*947
hearing the trial tеstimony could have determined, as the jury in this case did, that the foreseeable result оf the danger created by defendant’s alleged lack of supervision was injury such as occurred here. A fact finder could have reasonably concluded that the vеry purpose of the school supervision was to shield vulnerable schoolchildren from such acts of violence. As we have previously recognized, "[w]hen the intervening, intentional act of another is itself the foreseeable harm that shapes thе duty imposed, the defendant who fails to guard against such conduct will not be relieved оf liability when that act occurs”
(Kush v City of Buffalo,
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges Titone, Bellacosa, Smith, Levine, Ciparick and Wesley concur.
Order reversed, with costs, and case remitted to thе Appellate Division, First Department, for further proceedings in accordanсe with the memorandum herein.
Notes
Because plaintiff prevailed at trial, the evidence is summarized in a light most favorable to her (see,
Cohen v Hallmark Cards,