Mousketeer's family sues Phoenix police for $1.7 million
The sister of former child actor Dennis Day wants more than a million dollars from Phoenix police on accusations the department badly compromised her brother’s homicide investigation by overlooking Day’s body inside his own home for nine months and by missing key evidence and at one point even stepped on Day’s body.
Day’s sister Nelda Adkins of Coalinga, California, is suing the Phoenix Police Department and Phoenix Lt. Jeff Price as an individual for $1.7 million for negligence surrounding a multitude of alleged missteps that started prior to the missing persons investigation turned high-profile homicide case. Day was best known for his role in the 1950s as a founding member of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club.
This link is broken now. I found another one tho. Wow. So much is inadmissible. I hope they do pursue this in state court.
Published 3/2021
$2.2M lawsuit: Oregon cops bungled case of dead Mouseketeer
Snip:
The 11-page suit accuses the Phoenix Police Department and police Lt. Jeffrey Price with conducting a negligent investigation, including tortious interference with a corpse and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Prosecutors have charged Day's roommate, 36-year-old Daniel James Burda, with causing the death of Day through manslaughter or negligent homicide — but not murder. The suit suggests much evidence in the case disappeared as Day's body moldered for months, hidden by nothing more than cast-off clothes.
Day was reported missing by Meals on Wheels personnel on July 27, 2018, but his body wasn't discovered by police until April 2019.
"For a period of nine months from Mr. Day's disappearance, defendants failed to adequately search the Pine Street premises despite substantial evidence that a dead body was inside, including multiple complaints from neighbors and the Meals on Wheels delivery person that a smell of death was emanating from inside the house," the suit alleges.
Plaintiffs Nelda Adkins, Fred Richardson, Janel Showers, Denise Norris and Marla Seese
previouslyfiled suit against the police department in Oregon federal court one year ago, but the case was dismissed in January 2021 after Judge Mark D. Clarke determined the family's claims didn't fit federal law, but could be
pursued in state court.
Poor Dennis and his family