KC-area couple sues window company after toddler’s fatal fall: ‘Senseless’
Parents of a 3-year-old Independence boy who died after a fall from an eighth floor apartment window in 2024 are suing the company that installed that window, saying it wasn’t safe.
Destiny Randle and Moses Bass filed suit against Crown Diversified Industries Corp. — doing business as Crown Window Corp. — saying the company was negligent when it installed replacement windows at Independence Towers and failed to warn anyone that safety precautions for a potential fall were not in place.
The lawsuit said the death of the couple’s son, Tidus, was preventable.
“The bedroom window supplied and installed by Crown Window Corp. lacked basic fall-protection safety features that would have prevented a child from falling from such a height,” the suit said. “These safety measures were well known in the window industry and simple to implement.
“Crown Window Corp. nevertheless installed a window that permitted a small child to open it far enough to fall nine stories to his death.”
Attorneys for Randle and Bass did not return a message left at their office. A call to Crown Window in Chesterfield, Missouri, was not immediately returned.
Tidus fell from his eighth floor bedroom window on July 29, 2024; a drop which the lawsuit states amounted to a nine-story fall. He was found lying on the grass outside the building at 728 N. Jennings Road, unconscious but breathing. He was rushed to a local hospital and died later that day.
.jpeg "image0 (1).jpeg")
Initially charged with first-degree child endangerment, Bass and Randle each pleaded guilty in October to second-degree endangering the welfare of a child. Both received five years of probation, according to Jackson County court records.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Jackson County Circuit Court, asked in excess of $25,000 and for “the costs incurred in this litigation, and for such other just and proper relief as may be appropriate in the circumstances.”
The plaintiffs requested a jury trial.
“As a direct and proximate result of these defects and/or Defendant Crown Window’s failure to adequately warn,” the suit said, “Tidus experienced excruciating pain, suffering, mental anguish, fear and anxiety between the time of injury and death.
“... Plaintiffs bring this civil action to hold Crown Window Corp. accountable for its failures and to ensure that no other child suffers a similar and senseless loss.”
Parents asked for help
After Tidus’ death, Randle told police that, for months prior to the fatal fall, she tried to get building management to fix the window, court records show.
“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.
After Bass’ arrest, he 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.
The couple often kept the window closed by wedging a pole into the window track, records show, but knew that some of the children in the home had learned how to remove it the previous December.
One of the other children had opened the window in this manner just before Tidus fell, Randle told police.
The toddler’s parents filed a previous lawsuit in April 2025 against several companies — including Crown Window — associated with Independence Towers. That lawsuit was dismissed in August, according to court records.
Safety of the windows
The suit filed this week spells out a period in 2015 when Crown Window was hired to remove and replace windows at the Independence apartment complex.
At that time, the company sold and distributed Crystal Series 2300 Horizontal Sliding Windows “without fall protection features or warnings regarding the risk of falls, and were equipped with cam-action sweep locks as their only securing mechanism—a component prone to failure,” the suit said.
Crown Window installed those sliding windows throughout the high-rise apartments, including Apartment 805 where Tidus and his family lived.
“Defendant Crown Window was responsible for ensuring the replacement windows complied with all applicable federal, state, and local building codes, ordinances, and safety standards,” the lawsuit said. “... Defendant Crown Window failed to install any additional safety or fall protection devices on the Independence Towers Windows.”
“As a direct and proximate result of these defects and/or Defendant Crown Window’s failure to adequately warn, Tidus experienced excruciating pain, suffering, mental anguish, fear and anxiety between the time of injury and death.”
