Apartment Owners Ordered to Pay $10M to Slaying Victim’s Kin

Apartment Owners Ordered to Pay $10M to Slaying Victim’s Kin
(Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)
The Associated Press
9/11/2016
Updated:
2/23/2018

JONESBORO, Ga.—A jury has ordered the owners of a metro Atlanta apartment complex to pay $10 million to the family of a resident who was fatally shot last year.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports a jury in Clayton County reached its civil verdict Thursday in a lawsuit filed by the family of 33-year-old Florencia Gomez-Mendez, a carpenter and father of three. He was killed during an apparent robbery while walking home from a store.
Mendez’s attorney, Jeff Shiver, argued security was lax at the Bradford Ridge Apartments despite high crime in the area.

Billy Gunn, an attorney for the apartment owners, said he would ask for a new trial and for the judge to reconsider the verdict. He said, “The reality is this should have been a $2 million case.”