Beating victim to get $9.25 million settlement

Silas Creek Crossing, plant store agree to pay; Marker to go home

By Christopher Quinn

JOURNAL REPORTER

WINSTON-SALEM

June 26, 1998

Jill Marker won a $9.25 million settlement yesterday from the owners and managers of Silas Creek Crossing shopping center and Silk Plant Forest, the store where she was beaten and left for dead in December 1995.

The announcement that the parties had settled their claims was made yesterday in Forsyth County Superior Court. The suit said that security was inadequate the night that Marker suffered a beating that damaged her brain. She cannot walk, is unable to speak other than a few words, and cannot see clearly.

She breathes through a hole in her throat and is fed through a tube in her stomach.

Clifford Britt, one of Marker's attorneys, said that Marker's parents, Bud and Edna Hoisington of Akron, Ohio, can now afford to bring their daughter home from a nursing home.

"Yessir, boy, we started looking at homes today," Bud Hoisington said in a telephone interview.

"Whenever we get things ready, she is going to come home. Can't nobody stop her."

The Hoisingtons need a larger home to accommodate a wheelchair, and Marker will need medical care at home, he said.

Britt said that the Ohio nursing home where Marker is a resident costs between $15,000 and $20,000 a month. Marker's medical bills since the assault exceed $1.5 million, he said.

Marker was working at the Silk Plant Forest when a man robbed the store and hit her in the head about 20 times with a blunt object. She was three months' pregnant.

She remained comatose and delivered a son. Aaron Marker, her husband, has custody of the child. Britt said that Aaron Marker does not have a claim to any money from the settlement.

The case went unsolved for 13 months. Tips finally led police to Kalvin Michael Smith of Winston-Salem, and in December, a jury convicted Smith of robbery and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. A judge sentenced him to 22 years and 10 months to 28 years in prison.

The Hoisingtons became Marker's legal guardians and moved her to Ohio. They filed suit April 25, 1997, against the group that owns Silas Creek Crossing, Zaremba Management Corp., which manages it, and the Wackenhut Corp., which provided security at the shopping center.

A judge later dismissed Wackenhut as a defendant.

A spokesman for Zaremba declined to comment.

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