A DeKalb County woman filed a wrongful death lawsuit nearly two years after her 6-year-old daughter drowned in a creek near their home.
Raylithia Hooten sued Mercy Housing Inc. and several of its subsidiaries over Damaria Hooten’s drowning, which took place at The Hills at Fairington Apartments in January 2019. The child was playing with her brother and other kids near Pole Bridge Creek when she accidentally fell into the water from a tree branch.
“The primary goal of the lawsuit is to get the apartment complex to put a fence up or do something,” attorney Arthur York, who represents Raylithia Hooten, said. “(They should) put up some form of reasonable deterrent to prevent this from ever happening again.”
A spokeswoman for Mercy Housing, an affordable housing developer, provided a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that said, “Mercy Housing was deeply saddened by the tragic death of Damaria Hooten in 2019 and the devastating impact on her family and friends. We cannot comment further as this is now in litigation.”
Raylithia Hooten and her children lived at the apartment complex, but York said she never knew about the creek. It runs under two bridges on the south end of the property and is surrounded by trees, which the kids were climbing after school. A tree branch broke, and Damaria Hooten fell into water that was about six feet deep, according to the legal complaint filed last Thursday.
“If you have a pool, everybody sees it. You know it’s there and you have to put a fence around it,” York said. “With something like a creek, it poses just as much of a risk if not even more of a risk because it’s in an area that is tucked away.”
DeKalb Fire Capt. Dion Bentley told The AJC at the time that only children saw Damaria Hooten fall into the water, and they were not able to rescue her.
“Kids were just playing after school, wandering down to the creek, and with the embankment, it’s tough for a kid to get out,” he said. “It’s just sad.”
The lawsuit asks for a jury to reward compensation for Damaria Hooten’s death, per-death pain, medical expenses and funeral expenses. A GoFundMe page was created soon after the incident and raised more than $6,000 for the child’s funeral.
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