Faulty window was reported before child’s fatal fall in Independence. Why won’t city act?
After a toddler fell from the eighth floor of a troubled Independence high-rise apartment building Monday, authorities said it was an unsecured window that led to his death, according to charging documents filed by Jackson County prosecutors.
The 3-year-old was found lying on the grass outside the building at 728 N. Jennings Road, unconscious but breathing, and was rushed to a hospital where he later died. On Wednesday, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced charges against the boy’s father, Moses Lee Bass, and his girlfriend, Destiny Leeann Randle, including a class A felony of endangering the welfare of a child in the first degree.
But the woman charged in the case told police that, for months, she tried to get the window fixed by building management.
“Randle reported that she has attempted several times to get building management to fix the window and stated the window has been in that condition since they moved in approximately (one) year ago,” Independence police detective Kurt Jarnagin wrote in charging documents.
The child’s death follows a series of problems that have plagued the Independence Towers apartment building for years, including a June fire that displaced residents in dozens of units, as tenants alleged their calls for help to address a litany of complaints have gone ignored.
Tenants complained publicly for months about living among rats, mice, cockroaches and bed bugs. In March, The Star reported residents didn’t have hot water for two weeks. During the winter, there is no heating — and in the summer, no air conditioning.
Their maintenance requests ignored, residents were told if they complained they could be forced to leave, or the building could be condemned. Residents enlisted the help of KC Tenants, a local tenant union, and a court ordered changes to the building’s management and ownership.
Despite the known issues, City of Independence officials claim their hands are tied because, they say, no official complaints have been filed.
City officials acknowledge they’re aware of the conditions at the apartment building. However, Tom Scannell, Director of Community Development, said the city is unable to take action unless formal complaints are filed to the city.
“We can only enforce the rules and regulations and processes that we have in place. If there are tenants that would like to file a complaint for items that are wrong in their unit, they can reach out to city staff,” Scannell told the The Star in a phone interview. “Once we have the complaint form, the city can then step in to follow the process to ensure that those units are safe and livable.”
Justin Stein with KC Tenants said that’s no easy task for some residents, who he said are unable to file complaints because it requires a copy of their lease, which many claim they were never given. Stein also said that many have expressed it’s physically difficult for them to go to city hall to fill out the form.
Scannell said residents can use government identification and proof of residency like a utility bill if they don’t have a copy of their lease. He also noted a copy of the form can be found online under the city’s Rental Ready program page.
But as the investigation into the boy’s death continues, so does the legal wrangling over the building’s ownership and management, after the previous owner FTW Investments and management company Tango Management were ousted by a court in May after allegedly failing to pay back Fannie Mae for a loan and for not maintaining the building according to their loan agreement.
An attorney for Parker Webb, the chief executive officer of FTW Investments whose name is on the limited liability company (LLC) still listed as the owner of the building, said in a statement to The Star on Wednesday afternoon that the LLC is no longer in control of the building.
“(The LLC is) no longer in control of the property, is not and cannot exercise any rights of an owner or manager of that property. That, instead, is the responsibility of the court-appointed receiver, Trigild, Inc. and their hired property management company, Tarantino Properties,” Webb said in the statement issued by his attorney.
The vice president of Trigild, Nancy Daniels, did not respond to The Star’s requests for comment.
KC Tenants union advocates said despite the family reporting the broken window to management and requesting fixes for months, it’s now the family facing consequences after being charged with child endangerment.
“This reassignment of responsibility, away from the building owners, and towards the parents, is disturbing and harmful,” KC Tenants said in a statement issued Wednesday evening. “The charges need to be dropped and a proper investigation should occur, including context about the building itself.”
Windows exempt from city code
Window locks and restrictions for openings were written into Independence building code roughly 20 years ago, according to Scannell. Independence Towers is older than the code though, and the city code does not allow the city to retroactively enforce the amendment to older buildings.
Elliot West, a longtime building resident, on Monday said “everyone” in the building had their windows open because the central air conditioning at the building has not been working all summer.
The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for the Kansas City metro Monday, with temperatures expected to climb above 100 degrees this week.
“The building is technically supposed to have a central AC unit run off of a chiller, that chiller is not working,” West said. “They really haven’t had anyone up there to fix it, as much as they’d like to claim that they have.”
Trigild, the property management company appointed to receive the property by a Jackson County judge, installed individual air conditioning window units in June after the tenant union advocated for action, according to Stein. But residents said they don’t sufficiently cool the whole apartment, and that their electricity costs have since doubled.
KC Tenants says Trigild has done little else to improve conditions in the building, including fixing faulty windows.
On Wednesday, another resident confirmed the air conditioning issues, telling The Star that most residents keep their windows open all summer as a result. But Damien Hill, 20, who’s lived there since May 2023, doesn’t believe the death is due to the state of the building, citing the presence of functioning window screens on most windows as the reason the child shouldn’t have fallen.
“When you open them one way and there’s no screen, you open them the other way,” Hill said. “The kid shouldn’t have fallen out.”
According to charging documents, Randle said the window the toddler fell from was closed and secured when the accident occurred, but said she knew the window did not properly lock, and that they normally use a blue pole to secure it.
Officials said when they checked the room they didn’t see a blue pole.
After being arrested, Bass allegedly told police in a formal interview that he had known the window was a safety hazard since June 2023, and that the children had been able to bypass the locks and get out the window since December. He allegedly said he knew one of the children could remove the pole they used to secure the window because neighbors had brought it to their attention that the children were throwing toys out of the window.
Randle also allegedly said she knew of the hazard but had become complacent and overlooked it. She allegedly said she was “concerned from day one that one of her children would fall out the window.”
Independence mayor Rory Rowland visited Independence Towers Wednesday afternoon, speaking with residents as they came in and out of the building.
Hill said residents have been under “a lot of stress” since the child’s death was reported, and that communication between residents and building management has been limited.
“The people I have talked to are upset,”Hill said. “When a kid falls out of the building you live in and dies, it’s upsetting.”
In the wake of the child’s death, many Independence Towers residents have reported that building management has dissuaded them from speaking publicly about maintenance issues, according to a source familiar with the police investigation.
‘Every tenant deserves better’
An inspection of the building was last done by the Rental Ready program, run by the city of Independence, in December 2023. The program, started in 2017 to protect the health, safety and welfare of residents, is required to inspect 10% of all rental units. It requires all properties to be licensed and pass a health and safety inspection every two years, according to the program’s website.
At Independence Towers, the property has 130 units, meaning 13 were observed. The inspection assessed nine basic aspects of the building, including functioning smoke detectors, secure handrails and a visible street address.
The building passed inspection despite two active cases in units, 111 and 112, which have been labeled as “unsafe to occupy” since Jan. 1, 2023 because of holes in walls and ceilings, according to the city of Independence. No permits have been submitted to fix the issues, according to the city, and no formal complaints for Independence Towers have been filed.
According to Scannell, there is no deadline on when violations need to be fixed, but the owner is penalized by not being allowed to rent those units out.
“It becomes a challenge in how to address that. Obviously, as long as those units are tagged, the property owner can’t rent those units out, and that is the state of it as we sit here today,” he said.
The city has taken action in three cases without a formal complaint at Independence Towers, all related to air conditioning or heating issues, in June 2023, September 2023 and November 2023. In these cases, a tenant called the city to complain, and on each occasion, staff followed up with property management and the issues were fixed, according to Riley Newton, then spokesperson for the city.
KC Tenants said those fixes aren’t enough.
In their Wednesday statement, KC Tenants said “Independence Towers is dangerous, and every tenant deserves better.”
The Star’s Ilana Arougheti, Robert A. Cronkleton, Kendrick Calfee and Nathan Pilling provided reporting for this story.
This story was originally published July 31, 2024 at 7:40 PM.
