ZombiCon Sued Over Shooting

According to court documents obtained by the Naples Daily News, the suit accuses ZombiCon organizer Pushing Daizies and Southwest Florida Security and Investigations of negligence. Pushing Daizies and Southwest Florida Security owed a duty to the attendees including victim Expavious Taylor to “exercise reasonable and ordinary care to keep and maintain the ZombiCon event in a condition reasonably safe for the public and its patrons,” the suit says. “In particular, the defendants had a duty to take such precautions as were reasonably necessary to protect its invitees … from criminal attacks which were reasonably foreseeable.”

Charles Sinclair, the family’s attorney, told the paper the incident, at which Taylor died and several others were injured, was “one of those mass shootings that could have been prevented. This was not like someone walking into a school and waving a gun.” Specifically, the companies failed to “provide proper control of the crowd, estimated at 20,000,” failed to check “for weapons carried by attendees,” and failed to implement adequate security measures” to protect people at the event, the suit said.

Sinclair added he is considered adding the city of Fort Myers and the Fort Myers Police Department to the suit, and is investigating the city’s role in the incident. Authorities have yet to make any arrests in the case and the unidentified shooter was still at large at press time. Representatives for the nonprofit Pushing Daizies declined to comment on the suit and the security firm had not yet seen the complaint at press time, the Daily News noted.