Last week, attorney David Barber of Thomas Law Offices filed a second lawsuit against River Breeze Apartments, alleging negligence and failure to ensure tenant safety after residents were attacked and sexually assaulted in Louisville.
According to the complaint, the survivor was “brutally attacked, beaten, kidnapped, robbed, and sexually assaulted at gunpoint by a man matching the description of the same perpetrator of the prior crimes on the premises.”
Multiple women reported being assaulted or pursued at River Breeze Apartments by a suspect wearing a black facemask and carrying a handgun. The lawsuit claims that despite being alerted to the pattern of assaults, apartment management took no action to prevent or warn tenants about potential dangers.
In an interview with WAVE about the lawsuit, Barber said, “If you have a known risk on your premises, including criminal activity, that after you can see that it’s happening, you have a duty then, a heightened duty, to provide for the safety of your tenants and a definite duty to warn them. The things that would’ve protected people there and would have prevented all of these women from being attacked and injured are inexpensive and easy.”
The first lawsuit was filed in June by student Hannah Harshfield. Before Harshfield was attacked, she knew of at least two other tenants who were attacked on or near the apartments. Additionally, these attacks were part of a larger pattern of similar assaults believed to have been committed by the same suspect, which included assaults against women at other apartment complexes in the area surrounding River Breeze.
“The decent thing to do would have been to let people know there’s this danger,” said Barber. “River Breeze Apartments chose not to warn its tenants, leading to these assaults. This allowed the pattern of assaults to continue unchecked, posing a risk of harm to tenants and community members.”
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