Lawsuit filed for family in body-in-van case
Lawyers are suing the city of Memphis on behalf of a man whose body lay undiscovered for about 49 days in a van in a police impound lot, arguing he might have been saved with prompt medical help.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday by lawyers with the firm Wells and Associates on behalf family of Bardomiano Perez Hernandez, a 33-year-old Mexican immigrant whose body was found in the van in February.
The suit seeks to win damages for family members including the man’s daughter, who lawyers say is now just over two years old.
The Shelby County Circuit Court suit names as defendants the city of Memphis, Police Director Michael Rallings, as well as others involved in the case, identified in the court papers as “John Does 1-20.”
Attorney Murray Wells told reporters the city hasn’t taken steps to provide for the dead man’s child or the child’s mother.
“In this case they’ve acknowledged they made a mistake, but they have refused to address it or give the family any sort of comfort that they’re gonna make sure it never happens again,” he said.
City spokeswoman Ursula Madden declined to speak about the lawsuit. “This is an ongoing legal matter, and we do not have a comment at this time,” she wrote in an email.
The police director has promised an internal investigation into why investigators overlooked the body.
“This incident is unacceptable and should never have happened,” Rallings said early this year.
The internal police investigation into the case is ongoing, Lt. Karen Rudolph, a spokeswoman for the Memphis Police Department, wrote in an email Thursday. She didn’t make further comment on the lawsuit.
Perez Hernandez was apparently shot in an attempted robbery the night of Dec. 18 as he and other men sat in a van in Binghamton drinking beer after finishing a day of construction work.
The man in the van’s driver seat, Pablo Castor Sr., was shot and seriously injured. A third man in the van was unhurt, and police soon lost contact with him, the police director had said during a news conference early this year.
Somehow, Perez Hernandez was overlooked in the back of the van.
His body wasn’t discovered until Feb. 5, when Castor got out of the hospital and went to the police impound lot with family members to recover his van. The body had been undiscovered for about seven weeks.
An autopsy showed Perez Hernandez had a gunshot wound to the torso that damaged organs and a major blood vessel.
Lawyers for the family assert the victim might have survived with prompt medical care. They point to a March statement from Dr. Paul Benson, medical examiner and forensic pathologist with the West Tennessee Regional Forensic Center.
During a hearing, Benson said it’s possible that quick treatment could have saved Perez Hernandez. But he also said the injuries could have caused death, even with rapid treatment in a hospital.
The common-law wife of Perez Hernandez, Maris Morales, told reporters in February that she had been looking for him for weeks, and was talking to his friends, calling a hospital, checking online to see if he’d been locked up and visiting Jackson Avenue where he’d look for day labor jobs. She said she didn’t file a police report.
Shortly after the discovery of the body, the police department arrested two young men in the case: Mardracus West and Earl Brown. They face firstdegree murder and other charges and their cases are still pending, according to online court records.
The Commercial Appeal filed a public records request on September 6 for files related to the police department’s internal investigation. On Sept. 14, the city said it couldn’t release the records because the investigation was still open.
Reach Daniel Connolly at daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com.