Electricity flowing through a fence killed a boy. Are property owners and managers to blame?

The electrocution of a 12-year-old Fresno boy has resulted in a wrongful death civil lawsuit against the owners and managers of an apartment complex where the boy was hit with a jolt of electricity after touching a chain-link fence.

Adrian Antunez Perez died Oct. 2 after police said he tried to retrieve a football that fell between a cinder-block wall and the fence that was electrified by a bare wire at the Villa Margaritas apartments in southeast Fresno.

Adrian jumped down between the two fences to get the ball and got electrocuted, police said.

Fresno attorney Warren Paboojian, who represents Adrian’s family, said Tuesday he sued JMY Properties I, LLC, in Rolling Hills, Regency Property Management in Fresno and electrical contractors for causing a dangerous condition.

Paboojian contends the apartment owner and manager hired unlicensed electrical contractors who worked at the apartment complex without permits and inspections, which the lawsuit says is a violation of city, county and/or state regulations. The contractors’ faulty work resulted in the chain-link fence being electrified, the lawsuit says.

Paboojian is seeking unspecified damages for funeral expenses, wrongful death, negligence, premise liability and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

A telephone call to JMY Properties LLC was not returned.

Brad Hardie, president of Regency Property Management in Fresno, said on Wednesday that his company had nothing to do with Adrian’s death.

Up until Oct. 1, JMY Properties I, LLC “self-managed” Villa Margaritas apartments, Hardie said. On Oct. 1, Regency Property Management Properties signed a contract with JMY Properties to take over management of the apartment complex.

“It was a tragic accident, but we did not hire the people who were involved in it,” Hardie.

Once Regency Property Management took over, the apartment complex staff and workers were let go and new staff and workers were installed , he said.Adrian was a well-liked student at Scandinavian Middle School. He and his family lived at the Villa Margaritas apartments at 1235 N. Recreation Ave., near Olive and Chestnut avenues.

Police were called to the apartment complex just after 6 p.m. Sept. 28 for a report of a boy stuck in an electrified fence. Police and paramedics found him unconscious between the cinder-block wall and chain-link fence.

When police first tried to grab the boy, they received an electric shock. They got him out and called PG&E to turn off power. An investigation showed a bare wire had come into contact with a metal conduit that touched the fence. Police said the wire and conduit had recently been put there to power video surveillance cameras.

Adrian died at Community Regional Medical Center. His organs were donated.

The lawsuit says the defendants knew or should have known they created a dangerous condition because they had hired unlicensed electrical contractors to install and maintain equipment without “the required permits and inspections.”

The faulty wiring, the lawsuit says, electrified a fence at the west end of the apartment complex where children often played in the parking lot. The lawsuit also says the defendants put the public at risk because they failed to warn the tenants and their children of the dangerous condition.

This story was originally published December 5, 2017 at 12:44 PM with the headline "Electricity flowing through a fence killed a boy. Are property owners and managers to blame?."