Atlanta (AP) – The family of a homeless man who died after a bulldozer, crushed on a tent on Friday, during his death, calling him “tragic and avoided.”
Cornelius Taylor’s sister and son claim that the city staff failed to see if there is something in the camping tents before using a bulldozer to clean it. The 46 -year -old Taylor was in one of the tents and was crushed by a truck when his tent was leveled, the lawsuit said.
City officials called for a cleaning camp in preparation for Martin Luther King Jr Holiday. The entry was during the quarters from the Ebenezer’s Baptist Church, where the king preached. The autopsy report later revealed that the Taylor pelvic bone was broken and that it suffered damage to the organs and internal bleeding.
“The tent that a person occupied was crushed by this heavy equipment. This is obviously wrong,” said lawyer Harold Spence. “No one looked inside the tent, and if someone who looked inside, it took 10 seconds to prevent this tragedy. And if you don’t know what’s inside, you wouldn’t go.”
The lawsuit filed in the Fulton District State Court is seeking jurisdiction of the trial and seeking unrelated damages, as well as repayment of medical expenses, funeral costs and legal taxes. It was filed with the city and seven nameless city workers, including a bulldozer driver.
Mayor Andre Dickens spokesman said in a report “an incident involving Mr. Taylor,” was a tragedy, “but he could not comment on litigation.
Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled that cities across the country could ensure stray camping bans. However, cleaning is contradictory.
The death of Taylor led to the outrage of local supporters and neighbors at a campsite that called the city’s politicians how to deeply clean the campsites. They said the city is confronted with a very accessible housing deficiency, which is inevitable that people will eventually live on the streets. Family lawyers described the action as a call to the city leaders to treat the homeless as a deserving “respect and dignity”, instead of rushing to clean their communities “as if they were invisible.”
City officials said they were doing it. Immediately after the death of Taylor, the city organized a temporary morary to the campsite. When the FIFA World Cup comes to the Atlantic next year, the city has since renovated cleaning campsites, whose controversial goal was to eliminate all homelessness in the city center.
Last week, the city closed the camp where Taylor lived and said officials coordinated with a local non -profit organization leading the city’s homelessness services to offer people living there with supported services.
Lawyers said they were grateful for the efforts of the city, but more work is needed. Members of Cornelius Taylor’s coalition said they still pay for the hotel rooms for eight former campsite residents. Taylor’s lawyers and family called for the Dickens administration to move through bureaucracy, such as issues with documents and help others get housing.
In Taylor’s sister Darlene Chaney, during the Friday press conference, a tears in which lawyers issued a lawsuit when she re -filed descriptions of her brother suffered terrible injuries.
She said Taylor liked to read everything from science fiction to the Bible. He wanted to leave the campsite to restore his life and remained positive about his future, even as obstacles, such as his identity document slowed down the process, she said. She misses his “annoying” weekly calls – and said she now has only one brother to annoy her. She misses two.
“We are here just because something, in my personal opinion, was lazy,” said Chaney.
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Kramon is a member of the Associated Press/America Statehouse News Initiative Corps. The America report is a non -profit national service program, where journalists in local news halls report secret questions.