Yes, but apparently it is Blackstone's fault because they should've known dangerous dogs were on the property, especially after they chewed through the doors.
Posted on 05/21/2025 5:32:07 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
A Wall Street firm has been hit with a wrongful-death lawsuit over a dog mauling that killed a 16-month-old boy in October in Converse.
Blackstone, one of the largest owners of single-family rental homes in the country, is identified in the complaint as the “owner-in-fact” of the house in the 9700 block of Spruce Ridge where Jiryiah was attacked.
Also named in the suit is Heather Rodriquez, who was asked to watch the boy but allegedly left him in the care of her 13-year-old daughter after being called in to work. The teen had the child on her lap while she played video games in an upstairs bedroom when the three dogs broke in and attacked.
“This is obviously a tragic situation,” said San Antonio lawyer Steve Dummitt, who represents Jiryiah’s parents — Erika Castro and Julian Johnson. “My clients are looking for answers to try to find some peace and to try to find a little bit of closure.”
In December, Rodriquez was indicted on felony counts of child abandonment/endangerment and recklessly causing bodily injury to a child.
Court records show she was in the process of being released on $250,000 bail before she was served with a warrant for her arrest Monday on the charge of attack by a dog that resulted in death, a second-degree felony that carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Bail has been set at $200,000 on that charge.
A Bexar County Sheriff’s Office representative says Rodriquez has not been released from jail since her arrest in October.
Christopher Ramos, her defense lawyer, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Castro and Johnson filed the lawsuit May 13 in state District Court in San Antonio. None of the defendants have been served yet.
A Blackstone representative didn’t immediately have comment on the complaint.
In the suit, Johnson and Castro allege the dogs escaped from their room on Oct. 7 “having previously chewed through the door and were able to break it open, and attacked and mauled Jiryiah.”
He was taken by ambulance to Brooke Army Medical Center, where he underwent surgery for his injuries but died that evening.
Rodriquez rented the Spruce Ridge home that’s “owned by a complex network of corporate entities that funnel back to Defendant Blackstone Inc,” the suit says.
Bexar County records list the property owner as SFR JV-1 Property LLC, which was part of Tricon Residential Inc. before Blackstone firms acquired Tricon about a year ago, the suit says. The deal was valued at $3.5 billion.
Blackstone owns about 63,000 single-family homes and has more than $1 trillion in assets under management, according to various reports. The publicly traded firm bills itself as the largest alternative asset manager.
Johnson and Castro allege in their suit that the “Blackstone entities knew or should have known of the dangerous dogs residing on their property that had eaten through the doors and that posed a danger to the minor children living in the house and to the public.”
The plaintiffs' seek punitive damages against Blackstone entities and Rodriquez for their “grossly negligent conduct that proximately cause the death of Jiryiah.”
The dogs were seized and later euthanized.
The mauling is one of several dog attacks that have occurred in and around San Antonio in recent years.
Are you under the impression property owners are not accountable for what happens on their property as long as they own thousands of them?
All you have to do to in order to shirk responsibility is just be rich?
Sounds like the democrat method.
Two questions would decide the issue if I was on the jury.
1 Did the lease provisions prohibit dangerous dogs? If yes, goto 3.
2 Did the property manager hired by the owners regularly check for lease violations, including dangerous dogs. If Yes, Goto End. If No, goto 3.
3 Find Liability and assess punitive damages based on need to send a message to the New York Bankers.
End.
Been a while since I’ve written programs. Feel free to port it to something modern.
One property or 63,000.
Landlords are not accountable.
AI....
In Texas, landlords are generally not automatically liable for tenant’s dog attacks. To hold a landlord responsible, the victim must prove the landlord had prior knowledge of the dog’s dangerous behavior and failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the attack. Texas courts generally place the primary responsibility on the dog owner, but landlords can be liable if they knew the dog was dangerous and failed to act.
Jiryiah?
The lady and renter owned the dogs?
Why do you need three dogs?
Why would you leave your kid with someone with three pit bulls?
Blackstone....
Any relation to Blackrock?
Also, any tenant that keeps a prohibited dog in violation of their lease (and I'll bet this was the case here) needs to be swiftly evicted.
Permission to keep dangerous dogs in rentals has pretty much gone the way of being allowed to smoke in rental properties. One complication is that pitbull owners almost always lie and claim their dogs are some mixed-breed hybrid that doesn't violate the lease. Or a service animal.
Yes, but apparently it is Blackstone's fault because they should've known dangerous dogs were on the property, especially after they chewed through the doors.
Where was her man?
The responsible party has not money, so let’s go after the deepest pockets.
They’ll probably get a settlement of some kind because it’s cheaper than going to court.
The problem is human loyalty and respect has been bred out of the species. They now know only one thing, to kill each other and whatever happens to get in their way like humans...
They are no longer “DOGS”.
“My clients are looking for answers ... “ this Saul Goodman
Blackstone: a trillion $$ in assets. More like .. deep pockets.
>There are no bad dogs, just bad owners
>These were good boys who dint do nuffin.
AKA The Ghetto Lottery.
Yeah. Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928), is a leading case in American tort law on the question of liability to an unforeseeable plaintiff.
Because it is the responsibility of the landlord to know if there were unsafe conditions and ongoing violations of the terms of the lease.
The same applies if you rent out one property or thousands.
If you can not handle that then you should not be renting.
I’ve seen some beautiful pit bulls. I think they all should be outlawed and shot. They cannot be trusted, no matter how they have been raised. Flame away.
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