Partner of man killed by employee at Potomac senior living facility plans to sue
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: 87-year-old man’s death at Potomac senior living facility investigated as homicide
Police are investigating the death of an 87-year-old man found at a senior living facility in Potomac as a homicide.
POTOMAC, Md. - The partner of a man who was shot and killed at a senior living facility in Potomac has filed a lawsuit against the company.
The suit alleges that Cogir Senior Living had "full knowledge" of the danger posed by the suspect in the murder, who was an employee at the facility.
The backstory:
Just after 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 14, police and paramedics were called to the Cogir Senior Living facility in Potomac where they found 87-year-old Robert Fuller with trauma to the head.
Police later said Fuller had been shot, and they began investigating the incident as a homicide.
After reviewing surveillance video leading up to the shooting, police identified 22‑year‑old Marquis James as the suspect.
James was employed as a medication technician responsible for dispensing residents’ prescriptions. Investigators say he tampered with security, disabling alarms and propping open exterior doors before the murder occurred.
Investigators say the case started coming together after security staff reported James acting suspiciously, and then, an employee later recognized him in surveillance video from the night of the killing wearing what appeared to be a long wig.
James was arrested on Feb. 24 and charged with first-degree murder.
The lawsuit:
A statement released by the attorneys for Fuller's longtime partner, Linda Buttrick, says she lived with Fuller and was in the unit at the time of Fuller's alleged murder.
Her lawsuit alleges that "[the Cogir Defendants had] full knowledge and appreciation of the danger posed by one of its employees [Maurquise James] and with intent, negligence, gross negligence, and/or malice chose to ignore this danger with the most outrageous and insidious derelictions imaginable."
They say the deadly shooting came after "weeks and months" of troubling behavior displayed by James, adding that "before the shooting, multiple Cogir employees had expressed concerns about the behavior of [James]."
Their evidence includes a Feb. 3 complaint filed by a co-worker of James — 11 days before the killing. The attorneys say shortly after filing the written report, the complaining nurse was fired while James remained on staff.
According to the lawsuit, Cogir fired the complaining nurse "for a reason that makes this case all the more troubling: Defendant James’s mother […] was a senior director at Cogir of Potomac. [Cogir] leadership […] used [her] position of authority to suppress complaints about her son Defendant James and reprimand employees who, in keeping with their professional and ethical obligations, reported his troubling behaviors."
An email written by the nurse who was fired is quoted extensively in the lawsuit, and the attorneys say in the days and weeks following the murder, multiple Cogir employees, and Buttrick herself identified James as either a suspect or a person of interest in the shooting.
The statement from Buttrick's attorneys also goes on to say that despite her identifying James as a suspect in the murder of her partner, she continued to receive medical care for Parkinson's disease from James.
"Cogir kept him (James) assigned as Ms. Buttrick’s medication technician. It sent him – alone – into the apartment where Mr. Fuller had been murdered. Ms. Buttrick a woman with Parkinson’s disease who had just discovered her partner’s body, was required to receive medications from the hands of the man she identified to police as a suspect, alone in her home, which was still a crime scene, with zero protection and no recourse," the statement reads.
What's next:
A press conference will be held at 11 a.m. on March 20 at 8630 Fenton Street, Suite 320, in Silver Spring,
Buttnick's attorneys say a copy of the full lawsuit will be made available at that time.
They say that "[t]his action seeks to hold the Cogir Defendants accountable for the violations of Ms. Buttrick’s safety and dignity, and for the institutional disregard for resident welfare that made Mr. Fuller’s gruesome murder possible – for those acts which were both intentional and negligent."