Members of a North Texas family are suing a storage facility after their son was found dead inside a storage unit last year.
The family members, who discovered their son’s body inside a Public Storage unit in Arlington in April 2023, recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit, their attorney announced on June 19, per The Dallas Morning News.
Debony Maffett II, 27, went missing in March of 2023, and the following month, his body was found in the storage unit he was renting.
Attorney Justin Moore said the suit against Public Storage and Shurgard Storage Centers alleges negligence, false imprisonment, and deceptive trade practices.
Maffett’s sister and mother first reported him missing to the Arlington Police Department on or around March 24, per DMN.
Police attempted to locate Maffett by tracking his cellphone before they entered his name into a missing persons database, NBC5 DFW reported.
Moore said during a press conference that Maffett’s father went to the storage facility on April 2 and noticed an employee acting “peculiar.” The employee was uncooperative and denied the father’s request to look around the facility. He reportedly barricaded himself inside the office when law enforcement showed up and “obstruct[ed] the investigation,” Moore said, according to DMN.
A former federal agent and investigator who was also a family friend went to the storage unit the next day, and a different employee helped him locate Maffett’s unit.
“Public Storage facilities and the units are locked from the outside,” Moore said, per DMN. “They ended up breaking the lock on that unit, and they found Debony inside of that unit decomposing.”
Moore claimed that Public Storage knew Maffett was living in his storage unit, violating Public Storage policy. Maffett struggled with mental health issues, and Moore claimed the facility took advantage of the situation by allowing him to rent a unit and live there.
“We want this lawsuit to serve as an accountability apparatus and mechanism for Public Storage,” Moore said, per DMN.
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office determined Maffett died of an accidental K2 overdose, Moore said. His autopsy revealed that he had been dead for some time before his body was found.
Still, the circumstances surrounding the overdose are unknown, and the family has yet to see surveillance footage from the storage facility, Moore said.
Maffett’s father said the investigation is still ongoing through the Arlington Police Department. However, Arlington PD wrote in an email on June 18 that his death was cleared administratively in July of 2023, per DMN.