Jiansheng Chen’s family has officially filed a suit against Johnathan Cromwell for a wrongful death. In 2017, Chen was killed by an armed security guard while he was playing Pokemon GO on his mobile phone.
His family is filing for $5 million in compensatory damages, and also $350k for punitive damages. The brutal event happened on January 26, 2017 at 11 p.m. In the filed lawsuit, Chen’s family claims that the victim did not carry any weapon with him. The lawyers of Cromwell, state that the security guard was acting in self-defense because Chen planned to hit Cromwell with his own vehicle.
Chen is said to have zero knowledge of English, and that he wanted to leave the area, which Cromwell did not let him do. The lawsuit also claims that Cromwell used excessive force in an attempt to detain and then ‘’unjustifiably used deadly force’’, meaning his gun.
The family says that Chen was wrongfully killed. They also will go after the security company, stating that they hired someone that was ‘’neither competent nor fit to perform the duties of an armed security guard’’.
They go on by saying that Cromwell is ‘’dangerous, erratic, careless and of a violent nature.’’ They conclude that Citywide, the company that hired Cromwell, failed to use their proper judge of character when they decided to hire Cromwell. Riverwalk Community Assoc. should’ve know that Cromwell was armed. Cromwell’s attorney, Andrew Sacks, provided the following statement: The incident in question occurred over 2 years ago.
This suit was filed on the second to the last day of the applicable statute of limitations for doing so,and just a shade over 3 weeks before this major criminal trial. The suit alleges against Mr. Cromwell a wrongful death, and further alleges that Mr. Cromwell used excessive force against Mr. Chen.
These accusations against Mr. Cromwell have been denied by him since day one.To the contrary, his position has been unwavering-that his actions that night were solely taken in self-defense of his life. Self-defense utterly undermines the whole premise of the suit and renders it without merit.
