News: Family of Victim Files $20 Million Lawsuit
(Long Island, N.Y.) The family of a woman killed in the Medford Pharmacy Shootings is suing several different entities, which are believed to have played a role in her death. The $20 million-dollar suit will be against a physician, drug store, and drug company. The suit is also aimed against the former police commissioner of Suffolk County and the Suffolk County Police Department.
According to reports, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the victim wishes to file the suit against anything that harmed her mother. She has been compared to Erin Brockovich in her pursuit to take on the drug companies for their abuse on the selling and manufacturing of the highly addictive oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills. Sources stated that all of the entities are being sued because they knowingly created a public nuisance by selling to addicts like the thirty-four-year-old responsible for the killings.
The Suffolk County Police Department and the former police commissioner are being sued because of their failure to investigate and take away the gun permit given to the killer. Five months prior to the killings, the department’s Pistol Licensing Bureau was notified that the thirty-four-year-old had been possibly abusing drugs. He pleaded guilty in November and was sentenced to five life terms without the possibility of parole.
A physician from Flushing, Queens is being sued for prescribing the killer over two thousand pills in less than two years. He has also been arrested for similar charges involving a different patient and a separate case. He’s pleaded not guilty for his involvement in that patient’s death by overdose.
The drug store, Haven Drugs in Medford, is being sued for a lack of security at the time of the shootings. According to reports, the store had been robbed three times in the last year-and-a-half leading up to the month of the massacre. On June 19th, Father’s Day, the store’s cashier, pharmacist, and two customers were murdered as the killer stole over ten thousand pills.
The suit was filed Thursday in State Supreme Court in Riverhead. The victim’s daughter claimed that the tragedy could have been prevented if people had done their jobs properly. Sources stated that she believes everyone who had a part in her mother’s death should suffer the consequences.
It’s uncertain whether the suit will be successful, but it’s likely that more awareness will be given to the issue of drug addiction and abuse. It’s also likely that officials will take the topic more seriously, possibly adjusting legislation to help prevent innocent people from being the victims of an addict.
