Surprised homeowner shot real estate photographer in the buttocks, lawsuit says
He went to the house to do a job. She thought he was breaking in and pulled out a gun.
Now an Atlanta real estate photographer is suing a real estate agency, one of its employees and the homeowner he says accidentally shot him when she thought he was an intruder.
According to a lawsuit obtained by the Gwinnett Daily Post, a homeowner hired the company Real Estate Expert Advisors to sell her home in Douglas County, Georgia.
The company hired another company to take photos of the home for a listing, and the two companies agreed that photographer Whitney Morris would take pictures of the home at 9 a.m. on Feb. 2., the Gwinnett Daily Post reported.
Morris arrived and took photos of the outside of the house, then grabbed a key from a lock box he’d been given the code to, reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“He sees no cars in the driveway, no garbage cans, no patio furniture, no grill, nothing that would show that somebody lives there,” his attorney Mike Rafi told WXIA. “He assumed that the house was empty.”
When he entered the house, an alarm went off, and he went back out see whether there was a code to turn it off. He couldn’t find one and came back inside when the homeowner, hiding in her bedroom, fired a .38 caliber Ruger pistol through the door and struck Morris with a bullet, the AJC reported.
The woman came out and immediately called 911 after finding Morris shot in the buttocks, reported WXIA. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry,” she told the dispatcher, insisting that nobody called or told her when the first appointment was, according to a recording obtained by the station. “There’s blood everywhere... He’s very pale, he’s lost a lot of blood.”
The photographer survived, and police did not charge anyone with a crime, but Morris is now suing, saying the homeowner was negligent for not checking who was in the house before shooting and the agency was negligent in not notifying the homeowner he would be there, reported the Gwinnett Daily Post.
The employee named in the lawsuit disputed the homeowner’s claims that she was not notified and told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution it was a “tragic situation.” Neither the agency nor the homeowner issued comments to the AJC or WXIA.
“Whitney’s life was in danger because a real estate agent didn’t pick up a phone, because a homeowner didn’t see who she was shooting at,” Rafi told WXIA. “He’s leaving the house in an ambulance not knowing if he’s going to be alive. Not knowing if he’s going to be paralyzed.”
A GoFundMe page was set up to help cover Morris’ medical expenses, which has raised more than $5,000. Some of the donors said they were involved in real-estate photography themselves.
“It’s very humbling to discover that people whom I wouldn’t suspect to have any reason to think me at all, actually thought well enough of me to expend their resources, of whatever kind,” Morris wrote on the GoFundMe. “... It’s offered me the opportunity to rethink things when I’m feeling negative about humanity in general. Thank you all.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2018 at 9:10 AM with the headline "Surprised homeowner shot real estate photographer in the buttocks, lawsuit says."