The families of Isla Vista mass murderer Elliot Rodger’s first three victims — his roommates and their friend — have filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in federal court against Santa Barbara County, the Sheriff’s Department and the companies that own and manage the apartment building where the killings occurred.
The complaint, alleging negligence and violation of constitutional due-process rights, was filed by two Southern California-based law firms — the Becker Law Group in Long Beach and McNicholas & McNicholas in Los Angeles.
A press conference is planned for Tuesday morning in Los Angeles to outline the lawsuit.
Rodger brutally stabbed to death his roommates — Weihan “David” Wang and Chen-Yuan “James” Hong — and their friend, George Chen, on May 23, 2014, before embarking on an eight-minute rampage through the streets of Isla Vista that left three others dead and 14 injured.
Rodger, who used both a handgun and his BMW sedan as weapons, then took his own life with a single gunshot to the head, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
Plaintiffs in the case, filed in U.S. District Court, are Chen’s parents, Junan Chen and Kelly Yao Wang; Wang’s parents, Jinshuang Liu and Changshuang Wang; and Hong’s parents, Lichu Chen and Wenquei Hong.
Wang, Hong and Chen were students at UC Santa Barbara. Wang and Hong shared a two-bedroom unit with Rodger at the Capri Apartments, 6598 Seville Road in Isla Vista. Chen lived in on-campus housing.
The lawsuit claims the county and the Sheriff’s Department violated the 14th Amendment rights of the three murdered students by failing to adequately investigate Rodger on April 30, 2014, when deputies were dispatched to Rodger’s apartment on a check-the-welfare call.
Had the deputies acted appropriately, the lawsuit contends, they would have discovered that Rodger had amassed a cache of weapons and posted threatening and disturbing videos online.
“The sheriff was expected to conduct a search of Mr. Rodger’s apartment, but failed to do so,” the attorneys said in a press release. “By this point, Mr. Rodger had purchased and hidden several weapons and ammunition in his room.
“As Mr. Rodger put in his manifesto, ‘If they had demanded to search my room … that would have ended everything. For a few horrible seconds I thought it was all over.
“When they left, the biggest wave of relief swept over me … This incident made me realize that I needed to be extra careful. I can’t let anyone become suspicious of me … ‘”
Capri Apartments is named in the complaint because its managers allegedly failed to perform an adequate background check on Rodger, or warn the three deceased students that Rodger, who first moved there in 2011, had “unstable and violent propensities.”
Also named in the lawsuit is Asset Campus Housing, a Houston-based company that owns the Seville apartment building.
“Despite the defendant’s knowledge of Rodger’s bizarre and violent behavior, they negligently failed to conduct any background check, withheld their knowledge of Rodger’s sadistic behavior, and in doing so, allowed the community to fall prey to his vindictive attack,” said Todd Becker, owner of Becker Law Group.
The lawsuit cites a litany of conflicts Rodger allegedly was involved in with roommates during the nearly three years he lived at the Capri Apartments, and noted his propensity for racist and misogynistic rants.
The plaintiffs are seeking “compensatory and general damages for past, present and future psychological, emotional and physical pain, suffering, distress and injury.”
They state no specific monetary award they are seeking, saying only that they “have suffered damages in an amount not presently capable of being ascertained.”
They also are seeking attorney’s fees and legal costs.
The Sheriff’s Department issued the following statement Monday night in response to the lawsuit:
“The Sheriff’s Office cannot comment on a matter of pending litigation, and anything we might say in response would be insufficient when measured against the grief suffered by the families of those killed so tragically on May 23, 2014. Nevertheless, we continue to keep them in our thoughts and prayers, and to extend our deepest sympathies to them.”
The other defendants in the lawsuit could not be reached for comment.
— Noozhawk executive editor Tom Bolton can be reached at tbolton@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.