Family hopes for settlement with city

CLOVIS — While many this week will celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, for some in Clovis the day marks a more somber and recent event: two years since 12-year-old Gevion Lewis drowned in the pond at the city’s Hillcrest Park.

First responders pulled Lewis from the murky waters within minutes, but he never regained consciousness. He turned 13 eight days after the accident and was removed from a respirator at a Texas hospital on July 15, 2017.

“It was a horrible, horrible event,” said Albuquerque attorney Kimberly Brusuelas, who is representing Lewis’ family on a wrongful death civil suit still in progress against the city. “We’re hoping to negotiate a settlement. The most important thing is that they do something to make it safer for young kids.”

Shawnita Jones said her son Lewis was swimming in the pond with his younger brother and friends, “trying to see who could go the fastest.” Lewis “got tired and panicked and went down,” and his friends were unable to pull him up. Responding personnel made a rescue chain through the opaque green waters at the north end of Hillcrest Park and found him near the center of the kidney-shaped pond.

They were “just being boys,” Lewis’ uncle Tevaughn Loudermill told The News soon after the incident. Swimming is prohibited at the pond, but the signs stating as much had recently disappeared. They were reposted soon after.

On July 10, 2017 officials discovered the presence of cholera in the pond water, which they attributed to stagnant water from broken sprinklers. City staff put up a temporary fence while the pond was drained and refilled. The sprinkler system was repaired and the fence removed.

A wrongful death complaint filed in Jan. 2018 by Brusuelas took issue with the lack of fencing or signage, and told The News on Monday the she hoped for awareness by the city and the public.

“We have got to be careful,” Brusuelas said. “It was just around this time of year, it is just too hot. So of course kids are going to get into bodies of water, don’t we know that?”

A jury trial is currently scheduled Aug. 24-28 in Clovis, but Brusuelas said “the judge has asked us to attempt to settle it, and we are going to do so.”

According to his coaches and teachers, Lewis was “a phenomenal kid, a leader, a great athlete,” Brusuelas added. He knew how to swim, but in the pond he found a “death pit waiting to happen.

Brusuelas said she normally only does financial torts, but that this is her “once a year, makes me really, really mad case.”

“We want safety first and we want (the city) to pay the appropriate wrongful death settlement to his family and not fight us and say it’s his fault. They haven’t done that yet, but who knows what they’ll do?” she said. “I hope the people of Clovis do want justice for Gevion. I think we all want to see that death mean something, and that would mean looking at getting a fence up there and some other safety measures.”

Justin Howalt referred questions on any new safety measures to the attorney representing the city on the civil case. Cody Rogers did not return messages Monday from The News.