Florida Injury Lawyer Blawg
Several tips from the community and alleged DNA evidence helped police find and charge a man they say raped a student at Florida Memorial University on Sunday.
Steven Devon Mason Rivers, 30, was charged with sexual battery and robbery by sudden snatching related to an incident on Sunday at FMU’s campus along the 15800 block of Northwest 42nd Avenue in Miami Gardens, according to reporting from The Miami Herald.
The incident occurred around 6 a.m. when a woman, a student at the school, left her dorm with plans to meet a friend for a ride to her volunteer position at a sports camp. When her friend called to cancel, she began heading back to her dorm. It was at a bus stop across the street from the school that she saw a man who “whistled at her,” the newspaper reported.
The woman ignored him and continued walking past the front gate of the school. She alleged that the man was following her and asked to use her phone. When she refused and continued walking, she told police that he grabbed it from her hand and placed the phone in his pocket. The man then allegedly pushed her up against a wall and raped her before asking her “for a kiss” and telling her he would see her again.
The woman called 911 and a sexual assault forensic exam was conducted where officials collected DNA evidence.
An anonymous tip from the community to police reported seeing a man that matched the description the woman gave to police near the university. The tipster told police that the man frequented the area around the school and had been seen “repeatedly over the past two weeks” in the mornings, the newspaper reported.
Rivers was later detained by police for questioning and submitted his DNA for testing after a warrant was obtained by detectives who said that there was a confirmed match. He was arrested and taken to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
The university is maintaining its “heightened internal security protocols” to protect its students and community, said FMU President William C. McCormick, Jr. in a statement to the newspaper.
Leesfield & Partners: A History of Representing Victims and Survivors of Violence
Leesfield & Partners is a personal injury law firm with five decades of experience representing the victims of crimes in their negligent security cases. From horrifying hotel sexual assaults to gruesome grocery store shootings, our attorneys work tirelessly to ensure the best possible outcome is achieved on behalf of every client. With record verdicts and settlements, Leesfield & partners has remained one of the top negligent security firms in the state.
Negligent security is a term used to refer to a legal theory within tort law holding property owners responsible for providing the necessary security measures to mitigate the risk of crimes such as theft or assaults.
In almost five decades of personal injury practice, Leesfield & Partners attorneys have established the firm as one of the top inadequate and negligent security law firms in the state with the development of creative trial techniques. It is generally accepted that there is no duty to prevent against the criminal actions of a third-party, however, property owners and or management companies must take reasonable measures where these such acts are foreseeable.
To successfully prove a negligent security claim, plaintiff attorneys must first prove that the property owner and or management company breached their duty of care to ensure a visitor’s safety. Such reasonable measures to promote a visitor’s safety includes the installment of security cameras, proper lightning and security guards who roam the property, especially in areas where criminal acts are more common such as parking garages and other secluded areas. A plaintiff’s attorney must then prove that the property owner’s failure to implement these such security measures paved the way for this incident to occur.
“While property owners have a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect individuals lawfully on their premises, this duty extends only to preventing criminal acts that the owner knew of or should have reasonably anticipated,” said Evan Robinson, a Leesfield & Partners Trial Lawyer, in a previous Daily Business Review article.
The duty of reasonable care, which property owners have repeatedly sought to avoid or minimize in prior cases, lies at the heart of plaintiffs’ arguments in negligent and inadequate security litigation.
For example, in one negligent security case handled by the firm, a woman staying at the resort hotel in Key West was violently attacked by a man in a parking lot on the property. The man was not a guest at the hotel and was able to enter the parking garage undetected by security for 20 minutes before encountering our client and launching a horrific attack with a hammer.
She suffered severe and permanent injuries to her face and head. The firm secured a $40,580,000 verdict with the remaining defendant after entering into a confidential settlement with the hotel.
In an ongoing case being handled by Bernardo Pimentel II, a Trial Attorney at the firm, a woman has suffered severe emotional wounds from a cruise ship employee planting hidden cameras in her room. This woman was not the only passenger who was being unknowingly filmed in the privacy of their cabin by this employee.
The employee was later sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for producing child sex abuse material.
The firm is also representing a minor in ongoing litigation after she was sexually assaulted while at the gym by another gymgoer with a history of violent behavior at that location.
The ongoing case is being handled by Partner Justin B. Shapiro and Mr. Robinson.
“When businesses ignore clear warning signs about dangerous individuals, it puts everyone at risk,” Mr. Robinson said. “This case is about making sure companies take responsibility and put people’s safety first — so what happened to our client doesn’t happen to someone else.”
Previous Cases
The firm previously recovered $15 million for the family of a person killed at an apartment complex. The details of that case are confidential.
Mr. Shapiro secured $16 million for a couple who was brutally and savagely attacked while staying at a South Miami hotel. The attacker in that case was allowed to walk through the lobby and go up the elevator to the couples’ room where he knocked on the door. The husband opened it and suffered through a five-minute-long beating before the attacker turned his ire on the wife who he beat and raped.
Three hotel and security employees witnessed parts of the attack but did nothing to intervene. This property had a storied history of violence including various robberies, including some in which the victims were held at gunpoint, violent assaults and three shootings in which one guest was shot four times. Despite advice from their private security company and the Miami-Dade Police Department to have armed guards on the property, the hotel refused to hire such guards in order to save money.
The firm previously represented a client left as a paraplegic after a shooting at an unguarded ATM. Attorneys secured $3 million in that case.
Attorneys secured $3.2 million for a foreign exchange college student was left with neurological injuries and paralysis.
The firm secured a multi-million settlement for a woman attacked by a crewmember aboard a cruise ship who had access to her room.
The firm obtained over $1.5 million for a man injured in a grocery store shooting.
