JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A local mother, who has asked not to share her identity for her family\u2019s safety, claims her daughter\u2019s repeated sexual assault could have been prevented by the previous owner of her apartment complex. <\/p>\n
She filed a lawsuit in December against the former owner of the Mirage on Kernan Apartments on Jacksonville\u2019s southside, along with multiple other companies, after learning the landscaper they hired was charged with sex crimes against her 12-year-old daughter. <\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n Randy Foster is currently incarcerated and awaiting his trial regarding the 16 sex crimes he\u2019s been charged with, which include coercing the 12-year-old girl into sex multiple times inside of her mother\u2019s apartment, while she was away from home. Foster is also facing 11 charges for possessing 58 sexually explicit photos of the 12-year-old that his arrest report says were gathered during his communication with her over TikTok. <\/p>\n The lawsuit claims negligence against D.M. Koehn Landscaping, where Foster worked before his arrest in 2024, Kernan Owner, LLC, the former apartment owner, Asset Living, the former apartment manager, and Bryten Real Estate Partners, LLC. <\/p>\n The 12-year-old\u2019s mother and her attorney, Adam Finkel, argue that all of the companies played a role in allowing Foster, a convicted sex offender, to work in a community where children were present. <\/p>\n \u201cThese companies invited a monster, a murdering sexual deviant, into their community,\u201d said Finkel, an attorney at Haggard Law Firm, \u201cthis could and should have been prevented.\u201d <\/p>\n Finkel and the 12-year-old\u2019s mother met with Action News Jax on Tuesday afternoon to share the details of the lawsuit they filed. The mother shared her response in a written statement. <\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter is now a victim of abuse because basic safeguards were not put in place for my family,\u201d the mother said. <\/p>\n Foster has a lengthy criminal history in Florida. The Florida Department of Corrections said he served 14 collective years in prison after being convicted of five separate burglaries and robberies between Duval and Volusia counties. Then, in 2002, Foster was convicted in Duval County for murdering a teenage girl during sex, then dragging her body to a nearby house, which he served 20 more years in prison for. <\/p>\n The mother of the 12-year-old girl in this most recent case, along with her attorney, claims that Foster should never have been allowed to work at the Mirage on Kernan apartments in the first place, arguing that not enough was done to investigate his criminal history before allowing him to work. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen hiring someone to work in a community, especially a community with children, run background checks. Take even the most basic, minimal steps to prevent a known violent sexual deviant from being invited into your property,\u201d Finkel said. <\/p>\n Mirage on Kernan was bought by a new owner last year, and we\u2019ve learned the previous owner does not own any other apartment complexes in Duval County. Foster is scheduled to have another pretrial hearing on March 5th. <\/p>\n Bryten Real Estate Partners sent Action News Jax a statement responding to the lawsuit, saying, in part: <\/p>\n \u201cWe find the details of these allegations to be abhorrent and contrary to everything we stand for as a company\u2026based on a review of the allegations, the conduct occurred prior to our transition and assumption of property management of the property. We require all of our vendors to execute thorough background checks and vigorous compliance standards that are verified through third-party resources.\u201d <\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A local mother, who has asked not to share her identity for her family\u2019s safety,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,74026,54892,7840,74025,74030,639,74028,14359,14357,17876,969,116,118,117,634,74024,74029,74027,34238,24471,3709],"class_list":["post-153446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-adam_finkel","tag-ax","tag-ben_becker","tag-curran","tag-dm_cohen_landscaping","tag-duval_county","tag-finkel","tag-finn","tag-finn_carlin","tag-foster","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-local","tag-mirage","tag-mirage_on_kernan_apartments","tag-randy_foster","tag-taneka_hughes","tag-tanika","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}