The family of a North Carolina man fatally shot last year at a D.C. apartment complex filed a $25 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the property’s owner and hired management company regarding claims they failed to provide adequate security.
His family says Stewart was visiting the apartment building when he tried to break up a fistfight between juveniles and was knocked to the ground. During the fight, according to the family’s attorney Keith Watters, a bystander began shooting a firearm. Stewart was struck twice.
In the lawsuit, the family says a security officer on the property failed to intervene or call 911 after the shooting.
A D.C. police spokeswoman Monday said that no arrests have been made in connection with the shooting and that the investigation remained open.
Watters said Stewart’s family “is outraged that little or no progress has been made in the past year in arresting the person or people responsible in this murder of an innocent young man, despite a video of the people involved in the shooting.”
The lawsuit was filed in D.C. Superior Court against the Greenbelt, Md.-based CIH Properties LLC and CIH Wingate Management LLC. Calls to the company’s headquarters Tuesday were not returned. A representative reached at the apartment complex in Southwest said she would refer the call to the regional property manager.
Stewart’s family and attorneys plan to discuss the lawsuit Tuesday during a news conference at Watters’s downtown D.C. law office.
The family obtained a video of the fight and shooting that it said was recorded by a bystander. The video showed Stewart standing between youths until he is knocked to the ground. Gunshots are then heard in the background and as Stewart lays on the ground.
Stewart’s family alleged that apartment building’s owners and management company failed to provide adequate security, despite repeated violent offenses occurring around the apartment building for at least five years before the shooting. Citing D.C. police statistics, Stewart said there were 155 violent incidents within 1,000 feet of the apartment complex, including 15 homicides, nine sexual assaults, 77 assaults with a dangerous weapon and 54 robberies.
Stewart’s family alleges that a security guard contracted by the property was “watching the fight” and subsequently “failed to intervene” or call 911. The family also said security cameras focused on the courtyard were not operable.
The family alleges the management company “failed to hire, train, supervise, and retain competent employees and agents to guard against the shooting.”
Lawsuits against building management companies in the District following fatal shootings are not uncommon.
In 2019, the family of 10-year-old Makiyah Wilson filed a $30 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the D.C. Housing Authority after Makiyah was fatally struck by a bullet fired randomly into the courtyard by alleged gang members in the summer of 2018 after Makiyah had just purchased an ice cream cone from a nearby snack truck. That lawsuit was later settled, details of which remain confidential.
