On April 19, 2025, Legend Alonzo Johnson fell from a second-floor window of the house where his family lived, becoming one of the latest victims in a statistic no family wants to join. According to his parents, Legend wasn’t the first to fall from the upstairs window of a house in the Lincoln Military Housing’s Eucalyptus Ridge community—a neighborhood built for U.S. Navy and Marine Corps families in San Diego. In a legal complaint filed earlier this month, they’re alleging that the window from which Legend fell “lacked adequate child safety devices, including adequate window guards or window opening control devices.” The couple, Luther and Jordan Johnson, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against San Diego Family Housing LLC; Lincoln Military Property Management—now doing business as Liberty Military Housing Property Management, LP; Lincoln Military Housing San Diego Property Management GP Inc.; Brixwell Inc., and up to 50 currently unidentified defendants (listed as Does 1-50). According to the Johnsons, Legend opened the window “with minimal effort due to the lack of adequate safety devices and defective hardware,” and “fell from the second story through the inadequate screen and onto the ground below, sustaining fatal injuries.”
Legend’s death isn’t the first such tragedy in his neighborhood. Neither is his parents’ lawsuit the only of its kind. It’s the second this year filed against property management companies to also include a product manufacturer.
According to the legal complaint, filed in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of San Diego, Lincoln Military Property Management, now doing business as Liberty Military Housing Property Management, LP (LMH/LIBERTY), “managed, operated, maintained, and/or controlled” the property for San Diego Family Housing LLC (SDFH), by “day-to-day property management, maintenance, and tenant services at Eucalyptus Ridge and other military housing communities in San Diego.”
The Johnson’s also lay some of the blame on Brixwell Inc., as the manufacturer and provider of “window locks and related hardware products,” specifically for what they allege was a “defective and unreasonably dangerous” window lock on the window from which Legend fell. They say in their claim that the “[defendants] knew, years before Legend’s fall, that children in Lincoln Military Housing’s Eucalyptus Ridge community faced grave danger from unprotected upstairs windows.” The couple points to an incident in 2017, when a two-year-old fell from an upstairs window in the same neighborhood, resulting in catastrophic injuries. Further, they note to the court, “That tragedy drew national attention, led to military families sounding the alarm, and resulted in the Department of Defense adopting Evan’s Law, requiring window guards and opening control devices in privatized military housing.”
They also point to reports from the spring of 2021 in both Reuters and the Times of San Diego that “at least 18 children since 2017” had fallen “from upstairs windows in Navy and Marine Corps privatized housing.” Noting that with the report being four years old, the number had only increased, and that “The Navy itself issued urgent letters to privatized housing operators like these Defendants, directing them to install safety devices and immediately address the hazard.”
Contrary to the directive, the Johnsons say the defendants “failed to retrofit windows. They failed to provide adequate locks, screens, or guards. They failed to follow through on the Navy’s and Marine Corps’ directives for child safety.” Instead, they argue, “Lincoln Military Housing undertook a corporate rebranding” and “began doing business as Liberty Military Housing.”
The Johnsons are asking for:
1. General damages (non-economic damages), including but not limited to plaintiffs’ past and future loss of love, companionship, comfort, care, assistance, protection, affection, society, moral support, and guidance, in an amount according to proof and in excess of the jurisdictional minimum of this Court;
2. Special damages according to proof at trial, including but not limited to funeral, burial, and related expenses;
3. Loss of financial support, household services, and other pecuniary benefits according to proof at trial;
4. Prejudgment interest, according to proof against all defendants;
5. Costs of suit incurred herein, according to proof against all defendants; and
6. Such other and further relief as the court may deem just and proper against all defendants.
It’s the second such case this year. In the spring of 2025, Missouri parents Destiny Randle and Moses Bass filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the property managers of their apartment complex, as well as two window companies, after their son, Tidus, fell multiple stories to his death the summer before. Randle and Bass dismissed the case in August.