Jury blames Wackenhut, clears Walmart in death

A security firm provided inadequate protection at a Las Vegas Walmart parking lot on June 2, 2004, the night retired Air Force Maj. Michael Born was mortally wounded while changing his car's headlight, a Clark County jury found Wednesday.

Jurors ordered that the security firm, Wackenhut, must pay more than $1 million, with $276,000 going to Born's estate and three family members receiving $250,000 apiece in the wrongful death case . The same jury held the store, which contracted with the security firm to patrol its parking lots, was not liable in Born's death, according to Courtroom View Network, which provides legal professionals video coverage of high-profile trials throughout the nation.

According to closing arguments from the Born estate's attorney, Mont Tanner, both Wackenhut and Walmart should have been more vigilant in protecting customers at the store, at Nellis and Charleston boulevards, a "high crime" area.

Tanner told the jury that Las Vegas police responded to 2,683 calls to the store in the three years before career criminal Raymond Garrett sucker punched the 51-year-old Born. In the year prior, police were called to the store on average three times a day, for crimes ranging from grand larceny to assault and battery.

The store's attorneys argued it serves as a "safe island" for area residents.

According to Las Vegas Review-Journal coverage of Garrett's sentencing hearing in 2009, the fierce blow from the much bigger man knocked Born down. His head struck the ground and he slipped into a coma before dying from his injuries two weeks later.

Attorneys for Walmart and Wackenhut argued Garrett, 44, never did anything to arouse suspicion or otherwise cause them to compel him to leave before he punched Born and robbed him.

The 6-foot, 3-inch Garrett, who weighed 250 pounds at the time of the incident, was on store property for about 12 minutes before he attacked Born. Attorneys said he was not loitering or acting erratically.

At Garrett's January 2009 sentencing, prosecutor Robert Daskas said punching people and then robbing them was Garrett's "way of life."

He had attacked numerous people in the months before and after his deadly encounter with Born, and was serving a prison term for some of those crimes when he reached a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to plead guilty and avoid the death penalty.

While Tanner told the jury Wackenhut was negligent in failing to respond to Garrett's presence, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. attorney Rob Phillips said there was no way to assess the risk the man presented. He also called Garrett a sociopath who randomly picked his victims.

Wackenhut attorney Craig Delk said the security provider is paid to have a presence and deter crime, but that the attack on Born was unavoidable.

Wackenhut officers are trained to observe and report, but not to intervene. They are unarmed.

"There is simply no causal connection whatever between my client's activities on this parking lot on that night and what happened shortly after 10:30 to Mr. Born," Delk said. Raymond Garrett "is the guilty party here."

Wal-Mart lawyer Phillips said a reasonably prudent person put in the same position that the store was in "could not have done anything that would have prevented this random and callous and heartless and chaotic, nonsensical, opportunistic, snap-in-time event."

Contact Doug McMurdo at dmcmurdo@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.