Mother sues homeowners after son is killed by teen playing with their gun

Sandra Ramirez has fought for two years to see the people she believes are responsible for her son’s death be held accountable.

“I wake up everyday knowing that I have to fight. I’m a fighter and my son knows that I’m a fighter and I won’t stop until something happens,” she told the Tri-City Herald.

Ramirez’s 13-year-old son died two years ago when he went to a classmate’s home after school. While searching the house for a cat, Joseph Martinez and two other boys reportedly discovered an unlocked gun safe with a black, semi-automatic pistol inside.

One teen was playing with the pistol when it fired a round that struck Joseph Martinez in the neck, killing him.

Christopher Silva Morales, then 14, eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter, but Ramirez strongly believes the homeowners should also be held responsible for their role in her son’s death.

She wants the gun owners charged criminally, but she says Benton County prosecutors have told her they’ve made no decision yet on whether to file charges.

So, Ramirez sued Zachary Fluarty and Amanda Jenne, owners of the house on Canyon Place in east Kennewick. The case is tentatively set for trial later this month.

“I want accountability for all of the actions,” she said. “That 14-year-old was able to gain access to a firearm that wasn’t even his to begin with.”

“I’m not an evil person. I’m not here to say that I’m higher than anybody,” she said. “This is not about revenge because nothing is ever going to be good enough. ... I can’t have my boy with me.”

Negligence lawsuit

Martinez, 13, was a popular boy at Horse Heaven Hills Middle School who loved Michael Jordan, being outside and playing sports, Ramirez said.

“He really loved basketball,” Ramirez told the Tri-City Herald in 2024. “That was his dream, to become a professional NBA player.”

Each day Ramirez said she wakes up and realizes that her son is gone, and she feels that she needs to continue to fight for accountability for his death.

“I’ve always felt inside of me that there was something not right with the picture from the beginning,” she said. “If the firearm didn’t belong to (Silva Morales) then who? How did he gain access to someone else’s firearm.”

Her attorney, Juliana Serna, argues in court documents that Fluarty and Jenne were negligent and that contributed to Martinez’s death.

The homeowners do not have their own attorney, but submitted a written response to the lawsuit, disputing the allegations.

They claim in court documents they didn’t know the two teens would be at their house with their son. They also dispute that the gun safe was open and said Silva Morales may have found the code to open it while he was there.

They said they’d told their son that no one was supposed to be in their house while they were attending their daughter’s out-of-town basketball game.

“The defendants had no reasonable way of knowing (Silva Morales) or (Martinez) would gain access to their home or their safe,” their response said.

‘A slap in the face’

The teens reportedly found the gun in the parents’ bedroom after school on Feb. 29, 2024.

Silva Morales picked up the gun and took it out of its holster, despite being told not to by the teen who lived there, court documents said. As Silva Morales began examining it, the teen who lived there tried to get it back, but Silva Morales told him to wait and began pointing it around the room, court documents said. The gun fired, hitting Martinez. Silva Morales dropped the weapon and tried to staunch the blood. The other teen called 911 and his parents. Police the three teens when they arrived and tried to slow Martinez’s bleeding until medics arrived, but he’d already lost a lot of blood. He was taken to Kadlec Regional Medical Center but didn’t survive.

Later, when they searched the house, officers found a Walther PK .380 automatic pistol and a .380 caliber shell on the floor of the master bedroom closet, court documents said.

An autopsy showed that Martinez was shot once and the shot appeared relatively level, confirming the teens’ descriptions of Silva Morales pointing the gun around the room, said the documents.

Silva Morales pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in Benton-Franklin Juvenile Court and spent 30 days in detention.

Now, Ramirez is hoping the civil suit will hold the adults responsible. The lawsuit does not seek a specific dollar amount, but is asking for money to cover her son’s medical and funeral costs and for the pain she’s suffered.

The slow pace of justice is frustrating, she said, but her faith has helped her live with his death.

“It’s like you have all these plans set out for your kid as far as the future and then, when it gets robbed from you, it’s like a slap in the face,” she said.