Lawyers representing the NYC Housing Authority are adopting a victim blaming stance in defending a wrongful death suit brought against the city by the family of a murdered college student.
In 2013, Olivia Brown was gunned down at the public housing project she lived in, after being confronted by an armed and angry homeless woman who was also a former resident.
At the time of the shooting, several security features were missing or broken at the Harlem apartment complex, which, if functional, would likely have saved the young woman’s life.
Cameras, alarms, and guards, assert Brown’s loved ones, would all have either prevented the deranged gunman from gaining entrance in the first place, or alerted officials to her unauthorized presence.
But lawyers for the defendant municipality are arguing that Brown assumed 100-percent of the risk of becoming a homicide statistic when she willing rented a low-income unit from the city -- in short, because she was their tenant, it’s all her fault she got killed:
“All the risks, hazards and dangers were open, obvious and apparent to [Brown] and said risks, hazards and dangers were openly and voluntarily assumed by her.”
Brown’s fatal shooting was also an “unavoidable” event, NYC claims, suggesting again that there was nothing the mighty Housing Authority itself could have done to prevent Olivia Brown’s violent death, although the victim herself somehow could have.
Municipal Law generally mandates a city be given advance written notice of potential hazards to public safety before related suits are filed to recover from injuries and/or a wrongful death. However, the Housing Authority’s facility in Harlem was, in their very own words, a well known “danger” they refused to properly address.
New York’s callous litigators also failed to mention in their defense pleadings that, ever since Olivia Brown’s murder there, armed guards, police towers, and security cams have in fact been installed throughout the premises.
