When Kai Bernabe, 3, drowned in the outdoor pool at his family’s home in the suburbs of Los Angeles, the shocking death was blamed on a terrible accident.
At a news conference in April 2023, a police spokeswoman said, “There’s nothing to suggest anything other than a tragic accident here.”
But Kai’s parents now say that’s not true.
A heartbreaking lawsuit obtained by The Independent shows for the first time how Kai and his twin brother Liam, who also fell into the pool but miraculously survived, got there in the first place. It puts most of the blame on Jeff Bezos’s company, Amazon, which is the second-richest company in the world.
A lawyer for the family, Andy Morrow, wrote in an email on Wednesday, “Unfortunately it is our policy not to comment on pending litigation.” I trust you get it.
The lawyers representing Amazon in the case and a spokesperson for the company did not answer to requests for comment.
The lawsuit was moved from Los Angeles County Superior Court to Los Angeles Federal Court last Friday. It says that on April 21, 2023, Kai, Liam, their parents Mark Bernabe and Jasmine Coleman, and themselves took a nap after having “an active early morning.” In their complaint, the couple says that they always make sure the sliding glass door to the backyard is safely locked before going to bed.
It is said in the report that “usually the two toddlers would wake their parents up when they got up.” “But today they didn’t.” There is video evidence that they went to the sliding glass doors that lead to the garden, put a chair against the glass, and the lock failed and came loose.
The report says that the twins went outside to play for a while and then went into the pool together. Minutes later, the story goes, Coleman can be seen on security video leaving the house and finding Kai unconscious in the shallow end of the pool. The complaint says she grabbed Liam’s dead body and ran back inside, where she did CPR on Kai while yelling that Liam was lost to Bernabe, who was still asleep.
Mark jumped out of bed and ran outside right away. According to the complaint, he found Liam in the deep end of the pool, not moving.
The complaint says, “He immediately called 911, and members of the Los Angeles Fire Department were sent to the residence.”
When the boys were taken from their home in Porter Ranch to the pediatric trauma center at Northridge Hospital, Kai was already dead. After a scary fight for his life, Liam made it through.
“The family is in so much pain that words fail us,” a friend wrote in a GoFundMe page that raised almost $80,000. “The goal of this fundraiser is to help the family with the costs of this terrible and sudden loss.”
They said that Amazon sold them a “defectively designed” sliding-door lock that was “unsafe for the uses and purposes for which it was intended” in their complaint.
In addition to how easy and safe it is to buy things on Amazon.com, Coleman was interested in the product because it was marketed on Amazon as having a low price, being convenient and easy to set up, and having a long-lasting design, according to the complaint. “But as a mother of small children, the safety features that Amazon advertised were the most important to her.”
The complaint says that the Amazon ad for the lock called it a “Child Proof Safety Device” and said that it was “durable and effective.”
“This child safety lock has been tested to keep doors and windows open and safe even when babies and kids pull on them!” It said. “Safes have a pry-resistant door, a durable double-layer steel housing, and a pry-proof steel body that is seamlessly welded for the best protection against break-in.”
Coleman believed Amazon and ordered the lock, even though the language was badly written and full of mistakes, the complaint says. When it arrived, she installed it on her sliding glass door at home following the instructions that came with it.
