Case Results

A decade of insurance bad faith came to an end with a courageous 52-million-dollar verdict by an Albuquerque jury. In July 2012, PULIC, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Doctor’s Company, received notice that its insured, Dr. Pawan Jain of Las Cruces, was accused by the New Mexico Medical Board of overprescribing opioids resulting in the death of at least 17 patients. Two of the 17 patients were Ruben Bonilla, Jr. and Serina Clark. Mr. Bonilla died from Dr. Jain’s injudicious prescribing of morphine at the age of 43, leaving behind 11 children. Days later, Ms. Clark died from Dr. Jain’s injudicious prescribing of opioids and other medications at age 28, leaving behind three small children. Upon learning of the 17 deaths, PULIC immediately canceled Dr. Jain’s insurance policy. PULIC, however, chose not to record the claims in its claims system.

A year later, August 2013, the families sued Dr. Jain for medical malpractice. PULIC denied Dr. Jain a defense to the lawsuits asserting that its insured had failed to timely file the claims. Dr. Jain then filed for bankruptcy protection. The Bonilla and Clark families were the only creditors with claims on the bankruptcy. In 2016, the US Bankruptcy Trustee filed suit against PULIC on Dr. Jain’s behalf for PULIC’s failure to defend and indemnify its insured against the Bonilla and Clark wrongful death lawsuits. In 2017, Dr. Jain’s bankruptcy estate paid the two families $810,000 and assigned the insurance bad faith lawsuit to them.

In 2020, the Court held that PULIC owed Dr. Jain a defense to the Bonilla and Clark lawsuits in 2013, PULIC breached its insurance contract with Dr. Jain, violated the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing, engaged in insurance bad faith by failing to defend the lawsuits, and violated New Mexico’s Unfair Insurance Practices Act in several ways. On Tuesday, an Albuquerque jury determined that PULIC also willfully violated the Unfair Practices Act and engaged in punitive conduct. The jury found that $52 million in punitive damages was the appropriate amount to punish PULIC and deter other insurance companies from engaging in similar conduct.

The verdict will forever change the way medical malpractice insurance companies treat their insureds and their patients. The verdict is the largest insurance bad faith verdict in the State of New Mexico and one of, if not the largest verdict, ever in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city. The verdict protects doctors and their patients from insurance companies abusing their power.

A Santa Fe jury rendered a courageous verdict to send a message to property managers and apartment owners that criminals and criminal activity should not be tolerated in our homes. Eagle’s Nest Condominium Association hired Roger Cox to run its condominiums. Eagle’s Nest and Roger Cox chose to utilize a program known as Crime Free Multi-Housing which was developed in Arizona by a police officer who developed easy solutions for apartments and condominiums to protect their tenants through crime free lease addendums and confirming potential residents are who they say they are in their application. The Eagle’s Nest Tenant/Lessee Handbook provided that a lease must be six months or longer, the tenant shall comply with the City of Albuquerque’s Crime Free Multi-Housing program and Nuisance Abatement program, and credit and criminal background checks must be run for every new tenant. Roger Cox and Eagle’s Nest, however, chose not to follow its own policies and procedures set forth in its handbook.

Eagle’s Nest Condominiums was riddled with crime including over 100 calls for service to the apartments ever year. The management never followed up with the police to determine if there were any particular tenants that were problematic. Further, tenants lodged numerous complaints about drug dealing and abuse on the premises, but management failed to increase security or investigate. Indeed, one security guard was a tenant who had no training in security and did not appear to take any steps to provide security. To make matters worse, one tenant provided a detailed list identifying the drug dealing occurring in the condominiums, but management never addressed the problem.

In the summer of 2011, a potential tenant identifying himself as “Vicente Escobedo” partly filled out an application with Roger Cox to rent a condo at Eagle’s Nest. The application was incomplete and did not include any identification of how Mr. Escobar earned a living. Further, the social security number provided did not match the name provided. Finally, the lease was a month-to-month lease that was not permitted by the condominium’s rules. All of this information easily checked on the web for free, but Roger Cox’s property manager took no steps to confirm the information including obtaining a background check.

On August 17, 2011, the inevitable happened. A shoot out occurred between “Mr. Escobedo” and other unknown assailants in the common areas of the Eagle’s Nest. Based on prior reports, it appeared that “Mr. Escobedo” was dealing drugs and had involvement with drug lords. A stray bullet missed its intended target, “Mr. Escobedo”, but went through the door of Andrae Davis’ condominium right at the time he was looking out the peep hole to see what the commotion was about. The bullet struck Andrae’s heart and he died in front of his two young boys and his fiancé, Loraine Calkin.

The jury found compensatory damages in the amount of 6 million and punitive damages for another 6 million. As a result of the verdict, the City of Albuquerque saw a dramatic increase in the number of apartment buildings participating in the crime-free program, increasing the safety everyone who lives in or near an apartment or condominium building.

The wrongful death lawsuit named two CYFD employees as defendants. The case, which resulted in the state of New Mexico agreeing to pay a $5.5 million settlement in February 2024, should send a resounding message to the state's troubled child welfare agency, which placed 8-year old Samantha Lerma and her older brother in their father's care after their mother's death, despite his history of child abuse and dangerous propensities. The family had several prior investigations with CYFD stemming from suspected abuse and neglect allegedly at the hands of the father, Juan Lerma. The lawsuit states that the CYFD employees "disregarded the knowledge they learned and was available to them through the 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2020 investigations about the significant and specific risks Juan Lerma posed," when placing Samantha and her brother in Lerma's care.

A school is responsible for all of its students until they are released from school. To ensure that the students are safe, a school must always provide safe transportation from experienced drivers. This rule applies to all types of transportation including airplanes. And, of course, a pilot must know their limits and never fly beyond those limits.

Ella Jazz Kirk, 14, Michael Mahl, 16, and Ella Myers, 14 were high school students at ALCS in Silver City, New Mexico. ALCS’s mission is to provide primary education to middle and high school aged children with an emphasis on experiential and outdoor curriculum. Among its graduation requirements are participation in off-campus activities ranging from backpacking in the Gila Wilderness to mountain biking trips to internships with environmental advocacy groups or local businesses. One of its most selective and prestigious internship programs is the Eco Monitors Group—in which all three of the kids were members. Their work consists of approximately 30-50% classroom instruction and 50-70% off-campus field work. The off-campus work includes a range of forestry and river health monitoring projects, which include the placing and regular evaluation of forest transects on Signal Peak.

During the spring semester, the area of Signal Peak on which the children’s transects were located suffered wildfire damage. Towards the close of the school year, the students and their science teacher, Steve Blake, discussed ways of evaluating the scope of the Signal Peak fire damage and its impact on their transect project. Mr. Blake leads the Eco Monitors Group in addition to his duties as senior teacher and co-founder of ALCS. During these discussions, Mr. Blake assisted the students with requesting a ride on a U.S. Forest Service aircraft. The Forest Service declined to fly the decedents over the burn scar, and then regular classes ended for the semester on May 16. However, the school was staffed until May 23. During the week of May 19-May 23, the kids were on campus at ALCS working on the Eco Monitors Group’s annual grant proposal, as well as finalizing the yearbook for publication.

Sometime during the same week, Mr. Blake decided with his wife’s colleague, Dr. Peter Hochla, to take the children flying in his personal aircraft to view the burn scar. Dr. Hochla was a psychologist at the VA Clinic who travelled around the state to visit patients in his 2006 Raytheon G36 single engine aircraft, registered N536G. On Friday May 13, Mr. Blake approached the students on campus and announced the flight opportunity. During his discussions with the children about the flight, Mr. Blake stated, in obtuse terms to the children, that the flight must be kept a secret from other students. Several staff members were made aware of the flight by the children however, and they each assumed the trip was approved by school administration. It was not. Mr. Blake also insisted that the children obtain written permission slips from their parents in order to participate.

While arranging the flight, Mr. Blake spoke with each of the parents, reassuring them that the pilot “was in the Air Force,” is a “good pilot,” and that “he never flies when there is lightning.” Mr. Blake conducted no inquiry into Mr. Hochla’s record as an aviator, nor investigated the adequacy of his insurance coverage. In reality, Dr. Hochla was a poor pilot. He has a history of aircraft accidents, including one previous instance in which he overran the runway threshold at Whiskey Creek airport after landing N536G and damaged his aircraft, and another landing incident involving his previous aircraft at the Taos aircraft. Dr. Hochla has only been flying for 10 years, beginning his primary training at the age of 57. Though he served in the air force, he was a psychologist, not a pilot. His former flight instructors describe how he took twice as many hours of flight instruction as the average student to receive his private pilot license, and how they used to call him “Doctor H-bomb” behind his back. Several times, his instructors discussed with Dr. Hochla how “maybe aviation wasn’t for him.”

After obtaining his private pilot license, he never pursued a commercial pilot rating. In his subsequent years of aviation, Dr. Hochla continued to generate a poor reputation amongst New Mexico aviators. He once rented a Cessna 182 from Del Sol Aviation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is nearly as simple to operate as a primary training aircraft. Despite this, he required assistance from Del Sol staff in order to start the aircraft. Six months prior to the crash forming the basis of this lawsuit, undersigned counsel’s aviation partner observed Dr. Hochla taxi his aircraft past his home in Midvalley Airpark, turned to his wife and said “someday, that guy is going to crash and burn.” It is worth noting that the aircraft Dr. Hochla was flying when he and the children perished has been known by a more dubious moniker in the aviation industry since it first hit the market in the 1960s: “The Doctor Killer.” It earned this name for its propensity to kill doctor-pilots at a rate six times higher than it does the rest of the flying public. The Raytheon G36 is an extremely high performance business aircraft with complex systems, a powerful engine, a constantly moving center of gravity as it burns fuel, and unforgiving stall characteristics. Dr. Hochla’s previous runway overshooting in that aircraft amply demonstrates his under-qualification to safely operate it. In sum, Dr. Hochla was an accident waiting to happen, and any rote investigation of his credentials would have revealed red flags to ALCS personnel, had they only bothered to check.

According to witnesses and other pilots familiar with Whiskey Creek, it is an unusual and challenging airport from which to operate. Its sole runway runs approximately north-south (magnetic headings 350 and 170), while the prevailing winds at the surface almost always blow west-east. This creates an almost constant crosswind flowing directly across and adjacent to the runway, posing challenges for even experienced pilots attempting to fly the landing pattern. Additional challenging features of the airport include its high density altitude; field elevation is 6,126 feet above mean sea level, where the air is thinner than at other area airfields. This results in faster stall speeds and a corresponding decrease in engine and aircraft performance. The runway is also relatively narrow, with a surface measuring 5,400 in length by 50 feet in width. Finally, the field sits atop a mesa whereby terrain falls off sharply at both ends of the runway; some pilots have likened operating out of Whiskey Creek to “landing on an aircraft carrier.”

Unaware of these details of Dr. Hochla’s aviation past, Mr. Blake obtained permission slips from all three children and then carpooled with them to Whiskey Creek (94E) Airport at approximately 1515 on May 23rd. The weather was overcast, with ceilings at about 10,000 MSL. Additionally, the intended flight path travelled through and near afternoon thunderstorm cells, which witnesses described as generating lightning and microburst outflow wind shear. Dr. Hochla checked the weather just prior to boarding the aircraft on an aviation weather program featuring NEXRAD radar and seemed unconcerned with the gusty wind conditions and building convective weather surrounding the airport. It is worth noting that every software offering pilots such weather tools provide some variation on the following warning to pilots regarding its use:

NEXRAD data is not real-time. The lapsed time between collection, processing, and dissemination of NEXRAD images can be significant and may not reflect the current radar synopsis. Due to the inherent delays and the relative age of the data, it should be used for long-range planning purposes only. Never use NEXRAD data or any radar data to maneuver in or near areas of hazardous weather.

The children boarded Dr. Hochla’s airplane and they took off and turned north towards Signal Peak at approximately 1530. What follows is taken directly from the statement of Matt Ormand, a commercial pilot who witnessed the landing and accident:

About 10 minutes later I heard an aircraft over the airport and again went outside since the wind had picked up a bit more at least 15 knots continuous with the occasional 25 knots gust out of the West. Once I went outside far enough I then spotted the aircraft in a tight left downwind approach for runway 35 at about 600-800 foot AGL. At this point I commented to another pilot at the hangar wondering why the Bonaza was returning to the airport since the aircraft was down there about every 2 weeks on Fridays and always departed to the North but never returned back to airport after departing. The aircraft was in a very tight (very close to runway) left downwind [turn] when it turned a left base for runway 35, at that point you could see the aircrafts ground speed increase rapidly as the aircraft blew through centerline but the aircraft continued its approach to runway 35, once the nose of the aircraft was pointed directly at me he was in at least a 60 degree bank trying to get back on centerline. At that point me and the other pilot started saying 'GO AROUND GO AROUND." The aircraft then continued to descend to the runway and was fighting the crosswinds and wind gusts badly. The aircraft final touched down about 100 feet before the turn of to the hangar where my dad was working at. The landing was horrible, from what I can recall it was left main [gear], nose [gear] and then right main [gear] and the aircraft about 100 foot down the runway the aircraft finally looked under control. Right when the aircraft passed the fuel tanks in front of the hangar the aircraft powered back up in an attempt to go around. At that point I knew it wasn't going to be good and I told my cousin to call 911. The aircraft went off the end of the runway at a high angle of attack and also disappeared off the end of the runway and then it looked like the aircraft started to fly again as it started to gain just a small amount of altitude and for just a split second I said "I can't believe he made it!" right after I said that he started about a 15 degree bank to right turning east bound [downwind] then the aircraft started to sink[,] the angle of attack got steeper[,] and the aircraft disappeared out of sight. At that time someone said you can call 911 now. About 5 to 10 seconds later we saw a smoke plume northeast of the airport.

The aircraft suffered a stall-spin induced by Dr. Hochla’s lack of airspeed when the aircraft left the ground. In a stall, the airflow over the wing separates from the wing surface, causing the wing to stop producing lift. If it occurs while the aircraft is in a bank, it often leads to one wing stalling before the other, causing a flat spin from which recovery is difficult for the best pilots. N536G crashed in an upside-down orientation approximately 1 mile north of the departure end of the runway in a trailer park so violently that the engine was the largest intact piece of the aircraft remaining in the debris field, which was scattered about mere feet away from occupied homes. Most of the wreckage was consumed by an intense post-accident fire and secondary explosions caused by the aircraft’s onboard 100 octane leaded fuel and the presence of an oxygen bottle in the aircraft.

Patrice Mutchnick, the mother of Ela Jazz Kirk, was one of the first people on scene at the crash site, and witnessed the burning wreckage until first responders arrived and removed her from the scene. This forms the basis for her negligent infliction of emotional distress claim. Hours later, New Mexico State Police told the parents “we regret to inform you we have four confirmed deceased.”

Through aggressive litigation, we were able to secure the maximum amount of money available from the pilot and the school for the three children.

Delivery of the placenta is often called “second birth”. Delivery of the placenta is critical for the mother’s survival because if the placenta does not deliver, then the patient can be become septic and die. The placenta can adhere to the uterus and be difficult to remove. If any placenta remains inside the body, it can become a food source for bacteria which can overwhelm the body with infection. Accordingly, if a patient’s placenta does not spontaneously deliver, a doctor can remove it through with a procedure called a manual extraction. In a manual extraction, the doctor moves her hand into the uterus through the mother’s vagina. Because of the risk of introducing bacteria, the doctor must first provide antibiotics to the mother if the mother has previously tested positive group b strep (GBS). After the manual extraction is performed, the doctor must perform an ultrasound to determine if all the placenta was removed. If the patient later develops an infection following the extraction, then the treatment is to remove the source of the infection by performing a dilation and curettage (D&C) at the uterus and potentially performing a hysterectomy to ensure that no placenta material is left in the uterus. Even with antibiotics, our bodies cannot beat an infection if the source of the infection—the food source is not removed from the our bodies.

On April 22, Daisey Morales arrived at her local hospital to deliver her second child. Daisey delivered her baby, but she failed to deliver her placenta. Prior to delivery, her doctors learned that she had a common bacteria infection called GBS. Daisey’s physician waited for 50 minutes for the placenta to deliver, but it never did. Daisey’s physician chose to move forward with a manual extraction, but she decided not provide any antibiotics prior to the manual extraction and Daisey being GBS positive. As she attempted to remove the placenta, there was a silver dollar size piece of the placenta that was extremely adherent to the uterus. Daisey’s physician took her fingernail to scrape out the placenta from the uterus. Daisey’s physician chose not to perform an ultrasound. Daisey was discharged to her home.

Three days later, Daisey was back at the same hospital. Daisey was dizzy and light-headed. She had abdominal pain. Daisey’s white blood cell count was very high at 32.1 (anything over 10 is considered high and signs of an infection). She was fighting an infection. Daisey was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of placenta/partial accreta. The hospital chose to place Daisey on antibiotics but did not consider giving Daisey a D&C to remove the source of the infection inside her uterus.


The next day, Daisey’s white blood cell count had nearly doubled to 61.2. A sonogram revealed that there was gas inside of Daisey’s uterus. Gas is a byproduct of bacteria feeding. Instead of immediately moving Daisey into surgery for a D&C, Daisey’s doctor chose to perform an elective procedure on another patient. Daisey’s condition was deteriorating quickly. By the time the doctor completed the scheduled, elective surgery on another patient, Daisey needed to be moved into the ICU. Again, Daisey’s doctors did not take Daisey to surgery to treat the source of the infection—retained placenta. Instead, they continued to treat her with antibiotics.

Finally, the hospital decided to transfer Daisey to a larger facility. But it was too late. At the age of 26 years old, Daisey died on the way to the transfer flight. Daisey left behind her husband and two children.

Our co-counsel brought us the case about six months before trial. The case resolved after we picked a jury and were about to start opening statements. We able to obtain secure a settlement that was a factor 4 times what the defendants had offered the original firm. Our co-counsel did a fantastic job, but the defendants needed to know the patients’ family was willing to take them to trial. Our co-counsel knew we could prepare the case for trial and were willing to put in the work to get it done.

Chavez Martin, Jr. was a truck driver and traveled the open road with the love of his life. His life was turned upside down when a plumbing supply company sent an inexperienced driver out on the road in the early morning hours. That driver fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the center line, and collided head-on with Mr. Martin’s semi, killing the love of his life, breaking his body, and leaving permanently disabled and suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Mr. Martin’s story had to be presented to a McKinley County jury. The jury returned a verdict of $4.6 million dollars, one of the highest verdicts of record in Gallup, NM, which resulted in a $5.1 million recovery after application of the “High-Low” Agreement with no appeal.

In May of 2017, Davis Kelin Law Firm received a historic ruling in Public Service Company of New Mexico v. Barboan et. al.. on behalf of more than twenty Navajo Allottees. Historically Navajo landowners had received less compensation than other landowners for rights-of-ways traversing lands that had been allotted as part of failed government policy known as allotment, and when a group of Davis Kelin Law Firm clients refused to consent to a renewal, a public utility company sought to condemn a right-of-way and avoid a trespass action. The lawyers for Davis Kelin Law Firm obtained a historic ruling from U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, fought the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the allottees were able to reach a confidential settlement in the trespass action and condemnation action on remand.

To put the case in context, tone of the opening paragraphs of the 10th Circuit opinion reads, “No one can feign surprise to learn that the United States government’s treat of the original inhabitants has not been a model of justice.” The lawyers at Davis Kelin Law firm help fight such historic injustices.

Marcelino Morris was the first Native American ordained deacon in the Diocese of Gallup. He was tragically killed after a drunk driver ran out of gas and was sold gasoline by a local gas station, despite being obviously intoxicated. Shortly after the drunk man filled up his tank, he crossed the centerline of Highway 491 and hit Mr. Morris, ending a beautiful life. Marcelino’s life work was translating the bible into Navajo, a project he never got to finish.

Davis Kelin Law Firm lawyers sued the drunk driver and the gas station for selling drunk driver case under the negligent entrustment doctrine. We fought for the case all the way to the New Mexico Supreme Court where we received a favorable decision. The published decision builds on New Mexico jurisprudence regarding negligent entrustment of property and paves the way for other families to get justice in our Courts.

A confidential settlement was reached after the case was remanded.

A Bernalillo County jury returned a verdict for Plaintiffs that was more than five times the insurance company’s best settlement offer prior to trial in car crash with significant injuries to a renowned Pueblo potter. The injury prevented the artist from creating large pottery pieces that had been her life’s work, including traditional Jemez storytellers and her own unique contemporary designs.

Ethan Noll was shot and killed by law enforcement officers on April 4, 2015. Following the fatal shooting, New Mexico Department of Public Safety (DPS) was appointed as the lead investigatory agency and tasked to determine what happened that day. But when the family requested public records of event to hold the government accountable for their actions, the government refused to turn over the evidence.

To fight for what is right, the lawyers at Davis Kelin Law firm challenged the government’s withholding of records under New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act and took the matter all the way to a trial to obtain a verdict for the family. That decision was then upheld on appeal by the New Mexico Court of Appeals, helping establish that no government official has unbridled authority to control the public’s access to public records in our state and that transparency codified in the state’s sunshine law is paramount to representative government.

It is the Albuquerque Policy Department’s (“APD”) duty to capture any person violating the criminal laws of New Mexico. NMSA 1978, § 3-13-2 (“The police office of a municipality shall (4) within the municipality (d) apprehend any person in the act of violating the laws of the state or the ordinances of the municipality and bring him before competent authority for examination and trial”). If they don’t do their job, they are responsible for any harm that results for that failure.

APD failed to capture a known serial killer, Clifton Bloomfield, even though there was scientific, DNA proof linking that Mr. Bloomfield to the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Yi on December 3—seven months before Mr. Bloomfield murdered Scott Pierce. Scott and his wife had just moved into a home about 30 days before Mr. Bloomfield murdered him. Mr. Bloomfield was there to kill the residents who had lived in the house before Scott and his new wife had moved in.

Indeed, APD closed its investigation of the Yi murders before receiving all the results of the DNA evidence—the DNA evidence that would have prevented the murder of Mr. Pierce. Because of APD’s violations of their statutory duties, everyone in Albuquerque was in danger. Instead of investigating the Yi homicides and processing the DNA evidence, the APD chose to rely on a “confession”—a confession that was demonstrably false from its inception. That “confession”, coerced by APD in the Yi murders, blinded APD’s professional judgment and, as result, scientific, DNA evidence of the real killer, Clifton Bloomfield, was unreasonably delayed in being processed. When the APD finally processed the DNA evidence—just four days after Mr. Pierce’s murder—it confirmed that Mr. Bloomfield’s DNA was located underneath the fingernail of Tak Yi. The crime lab knew that the DNA belong to Mr. Bloomfield because Mr. Bloomfield’s DNA profile was already indexed in the Federal DNA database (CODIS) for a prior crime Mr. Bloomfield committed in Arizona. If APD had performed an investigation of the Yi murders, Mr. Bloomfield would have been picked up on probation violations well before he could have had the opportunity to murder Mr. Pierce.

On December 12, Defendant Ross collected a DNA sample (Q35-1) from the fingernail of Tak Yi’s right hand. That sample contained indisputable scientific DNA evidence from a known criminal—Clifton Bloomfield. Although it is the Homicide Detective’s and the Criminalistics Personnel’s (the Defendants in this case) job to request DNA analysis from the laboratory, neither Detective Morant (lead Homicide Detective) nor Detective Ross (Criminalistics) submitted Q35-1 to the APD crime lab until . See Submission of Evidence, § 2-08-10 (“When laboratory analysis is required of any evidence, it is the submitting officer or the investigating detective’s responsibility to notify Criminalistics”.). Further, APD removed the Yi murder investigation from the priority list by the end of December. Then, in April of the next year, Defective Morant closed his investigation of the Yi murders even though the Yi’s true murder still roamed the streets and the results of the DNA evidence collected from the Yi murders had not been processed.

If the Defendants had searched Q35-1 in CODIS, then the Defendants could have arrested Bloomfield for violations of the terms of his probation as well as the murders of Tak and Pung Yi. Under the Tort Claims Act and case law, each of the Defendants had a duty to reasonably investigate the Yi Homicides including searching DNA obtained from the crime scene of the Yi Homicides against DNA profiles of known criminals such as Mr. Bloomfield.

Mr. Bloomfield was on probation and could have been arrested immediately by his probation office when he came to see him weekly. Further, APD pulled over Mr. Bloomfield on suspicion of robbery two different times before Scott’s murder. Then he allegedly kidnapped a women by placing her in his trunk, but APD failed to investigate the kidnapping.

On June 28, Ms. Pierce watched in horror as her husband of only seven days was shot in her own home by serial criminal who should have been in jail for the Yi Homicides and numerous other crimes. Ms. Pierce held her husband in her arms as he slowly left this world. Ms. Pierce has suffered and continues to suffer extensive emotional distress and fear from watching her husband die.

The case made national news and ultimately ended up on NBC’s Dateline: ‘A Shot in the Dark’, Part 1 (nbcnews.com).