A year after the death of Tim Hurley, 59, and Kevin Carter, 51, the family of Hurley has decided to file a negligence and wrongful death civil lawsuit against the Zota Beach Resort and Victory Security Agency. At the time of their deaths, Hurley was the Zota resort manager and Carter was a security guard. Last summer, both men were killed during a robbery. It turns out, the Victory Security Agency hired the man that killed both men.
A year after the death of Tim Hurley, 59, and Kevin Carter, 51, the family of Hurley has decided to file a negligence and wrongful death civil lawsuit against the Zota Beach Resort and Victory Security Agency. At the time of their deaths, Hurley was the Zota resort manager and Carter was a security guard. Last summer, both men were killed during a robbery. It turns out, the Victory Security Agency hired the man that killed both men.
Matt Morgan and Herb Hofmann, the attorney’s representing the family, said the defendants “should have performed basic checks and that the deaths of Hurley and Kevin Carter were both preventable and foreseeable.” But what happened, exactly?
According to the police report, Hurley and Carter were working at the resort around 2:40 a.m. On August 4 when “former co-worker Darryl Hanna Jr., 29, entered a new construction area of the hotel that led to the pool, wearing a mask, long white shirt, black pants, black shoes and carrying a firearm in his left hand.” Upon entering the lobby, he “fatally shot Hurley and Carter” before collecting $900 in cash from the three cash drawers. Soon after the fatal incident, he was “arrested and charged with armed robbery and two counts of murder.” However, after only a month in jail, Hanna suffered a “stroke-like incident that put him in a vegetative state” and is not expected to recover, according to four doctor’s reports. As a result, Circuit Court Judge Brian Iten “ordered Hanna released from custody.” For the time being, he will “receive medical care at Manatee Memorial Hospital, and if he regains consciousness, he will be prosecuted.”
Since losing her uncle, Kristine Greer, Hurley’s niece, said she and her family have struggled to care for Hurley’s mother, “who is partially paralyzed from two strokes.” In a recent press release, she said:
“I never realized how much we relied on him. He was my dad in every sense of the word, and although I’m definitely mourning, I need to focus on my grandmother and her care. She is just shattered and heartbroken. We have done everything we can to get as close to normal as we possibly can. We just miss him physically, emotionally and financially — in every way. He was the glue that held our family together.”
When commenting on the lawsuit, Morgan said:
“This tragedy for the family has been unimaginable, in a sense that it took somebody that as the center of their universe permanently and forever, thereby altering the course of their lives. This was not a normal family unit where somebody was an uncle or a brother or a sister, and you saw them occasionally. This is a family that lived together and worked together and was with each other at all times. This was the focal point of the family, Tim Hurley. He was the person that held the family together, both financially and emotionally.”
He also made clear that the suit isn’t an attack on Carter, but rather on the “policies and procedures of Zota resort and the security company.” He said:
“I don’t think that Kevin being in the position he was in, could have done anything more than he did. I think it should send a message for security companies to provide a diligent background search before hiring employees…Hopefully, a life can be saved from this suit. A large part of what we do is preventing tragedies from occurring in the future.”
Both the Zota Beach Resort and Victory Security Agency have yet to comment on the suit.
Sources:
Family of Zota Beach Resort murder victim files wrongful death lawsuit
Nearly a year later, family of Longboat Key murder victim files lawsuit
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