Questions result from Marker suit

Who is liable in crimes at shopping centers?

By Lorenzo Perez

JOURNAL REPORTER

WINSTON-SALEM

July 26, 1998

She was alone in the Silk Plant Forest shop that evening. She had sent the only other person working that night home already. The security guard on duty was sitting in his light-blue Ford Escort in a corner of the parking lot, according to his deposition. He had a gun and a voice pager.

His car was unmarked. Christmas-shoppers' cars packed the parking lot, he testified. The guard said he had complained to shopping-center management that one guard was not enough to patrol the entire shopping center, especially during the holiday season.

From where he was parked he couldn't see Marker's attacker enter the Silk Plant Forest shop, he testified.

"Would another security guard walking around have deterred the crime? I think a jury would have said `yes,' " Britt said.

Jill Marker was hit 20 times in the back of the head with a blunt object. Her skull was smashed. About $300 was taken from the cash register, and she was left for dead. At the time of the attack, she was three months pregnant. She spent several months comatose and delivered a son while still in a near coma.

Marker can't walk. She can speak only a few words. She breathes through a hole in her throat and has to be fed through a tube in her stomach. After the attack, her parents moved her back home to Akron, Ohio.

But she was flown back to Winston-Salem in December for Kalvin Michael Smith's trial, and she pointed at him in court and identified him as the man who robbed and beat her.

Smith was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Bud Hoisington, Marker's father, said that the settlement will be used to move his daughter out of a nursing home. Her medical bills have exceeded $1.5 million, and Hoisington and his wife are looking for a larger home to accommodate a wheelchair and Marker's medical care, he said.

"Jill keeps writing on her board, `I want to go home. I want to go home,' " Hoisington said. "We're building a new home with a therapy room, three bedrooms and a sunroom."

Marker's estranged husband, Aaron Marker, does not have a claim on her settlement, Britt said. He has custody of their son.

Although a judge dismissed Wackenhut Corp. - the company that provided security for Silas Creek Crossing - as a defendant to the suit, Britt said he plans to appeal the decision.

A spokesman for Wackenhut said that the company no longer contracts with Silas Creek Crossing.

Some security consultants say that the multimillion-dollar settlement that Marker won will serve only as a brief wake-up call for shopping centers willing to take their chances without adequate security.

"Within a few months, everybody becomes desensitized and suffers from a `this-can't-happen-to-us' syndrome," said Charles Mittelstadt, the president of International Security Consultants, Inc. "Everyone seems to revert back to that comfort zone, and, bottom line, the profit zone."

At the Marshall's store at Silas Creek Crossing, the evening-shift employees leave together at 10 p.m. They huddle inside by the store's door until everyone is ready to go. No one walks to their car alone. It's store policy.

A 19-year-old employee said she can't help but think about what happened to Marker at the shopping center.

"I always think about it. As a female alone walking to your car, you always think about it," she said.

Some shopping-center employees said they wonder whether the security is adequate.

Kathy Clark manages a K&S News shop at Thruway Shopping Center on Stratford Road. The strip mall has more than 50 stores but no security guards, she said.

"We've got a lot of high-end stores, and 99 percent of our customers are nice," she said. "But if we have a shoplifter, I have to run him off myself."

Wanda J. Elders, the manager of the Bon Worth clothing shop at Marketplace Mall on Peters Creek Parkway, said that the mall relies on two security guards a shift. She questions whether the security detail at the mall can offer enough protection.

"I guess they do the best they can, but they're not really allowed to do a lot," she said. "They don't carry a gun, not even a stick or anything. Would that make you safe? I don't know.

"Most of the time, they walk around in the inside. I just kind of look out for myself."

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