News
‘The system failed us:’ Audrii Cunningham’s father, grandmother release statement following her death
LIVINGSTON, Texas – The father of Audrii Cunningham along with her grandmother have released a statement after her body was found in the Trinity River on Tuesday.
The Livingston girl was at the center of an Amber Alert and had been missing for six days. Her body was found on Tuesday after multiple days of searching.
Saturday, her father and grandmother released a statement, saying they are devastated by what happened to Audrii and also saying the suspect in her murder, Don Steven McDougal, did not show up in the sex offender registration system when they looked him up before allowing him to stay on their property.
“The Munsch and Cunningham families are devastated and grieving for what happened to our little ray of sunshine, Audrii. We are being attacked and criticized on social media platforms for showing compassion and mercy to this formerly incarcerated person, but our interactions with this person were a result of our faith, which teaches us to give our fellow man a second chance,” the statement read. “Unfortunately, the system failed us due to a loophole in the sex offender registration system. Don Steven McDougal had a history of disrespect for young female children, but it did not show up when we checked the registry before allowing him to stay in an old camper in our back yard while he tried to start a new life. Had we been aware of what we know now, this man would never have set foot on our property, much less been a part of our little girl’s life.”
The family thanked law enforcement for their efforts to find Audrii and also urged lawmakers to look at the loophole which they say prevented them from knowing McDougal was a convicted sex offender.
“Audrii Danielle Cunningham will be missed, but hopefully not forgotten as we would like to ask Legislators and Law Enforcement both locally and in Washington, DC to look at the loophole that prevented us from knowing what Don McDougal was, a convicted sex offender. The sex offender registry is a valuable tool that parents and grandparents everywhere use to keep their children safe from these violent predators. This failing of the system is a crime that we cannot allow to go overlooked,” the statement said.
The family also announced a public memorial ceremony will be held for Audrii at the First Baptist Church in Livingston on Friday, Mar. 1. It will be between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.
“Please wear purple which was Audrii’s favorite color. A private funeral ceremony will be held the next day for close friends and family only. Please respect us in our time of grieving as we lay our precious little Angel to rest,” the statement said.
You can read the full statement below:
One week ago on Thursday, the 15th of February 2024 Audrii Danielle Cunningham was lured under false pretenses, which led to a senseless act of violence occurring and ultimately to her death. Tragically, Audrii’s death occurred at the hands of a monster we thought was a friend, only 10 days after Audrii’s 11th birthday.
Audrii Cunningham was a charismatic, beautiful, talented, and kind young lady. She loved singing, dancing, reading, and painting, she was even learning the skills of a tattoo artist. Most of all, caring for and playing with animals was her passion; Audrii’s aspirations were to become a veterinarian or an animal trainer. Every day Audrii was out caring for our pets and walking our dogs, she would even walk the dogs of neighbors in the subdivision. She touched so many lives and filled them with joy and happiness that was infectious. She had so much energy and brought a passion to everything she did. Audrii will be missed by a great many people.
The Munsch and Cunningham families are devastated and grieving for what happened to our little ray of sunshine, Audrii. We are being attacked and criticized on social media platforms for showing compassion and mercy to this formerly incarcerated person, but our interactions with this person were a result of our faith, which teaches us to give our fellow man a second chance.
Unfortunately, the system failed us due to a loophole in the sex offender registration system. Don Steven McDougal had a history of disrespect for young female children, but it did not show up when we checked the registry before allowing him to stay in an old camper in our back yard while he tried to start a new life. Had we been aware of what we know now, this man would never have set foot on our property, much less been a part of our little girl’s life.
We wish to acknowledge and thank the Polk County Sherriff’s Office, the Livingston Police Department, the Texas State Troopers, the Texas Rangers, the Texas State Guard, the Trinity River Authority, the FBI and nearby County Sherriff Departments and well as thousands of volunteers, our local VFW Post, and the public for helping to search for and ultimately find the body of Audrii. We also wish to thank the non-profit organization Texas EquuSearch for their tireless efforts that ultimately led to the discovery of, and recovery of Audrii’s body from the waters of the Trinity River. This was a hard-working multi-jurisdictional effort that spent long hours in order to bring our angel Audrii home to us and bring this monster to justice.
We also wish to acknowledge and thank the members of the press who helped spread the word when the Amber Alert went out, and quickly pulled our community together with the common goal of bringing our little girl back home safe and sound. This coverage was considered invaluable to help focus attention and gather valuable leads that helped the search efforts. We were advised not to speak with the press during this time as it may have impeded the search for Audrii or shifted the focus from finding her.
Audrii Danielle Cunningham will be missed, but hopefully not forgotten as we would like to ask Legislators and Law Enforcement both locally and in Washington, DC to look at the loophole that prevented us from knowing what Don McDougal was, a convicted sex offender. The sex offender registry is a valuable tool that parents and grandparents everywhere use to keep their children safe from these violent predators. This failing of the system is a crime that we cannot allow to go overlooked.
There will be a memorial ceremony for the repose of the soul of Audrii Danielle Cunningham at the First Baptist Church in Livingston, TX on Friday, the 1st of March 2024 between the hours of 5 PM to 8 PM, and the public who helped in this effort are invited to attend. Please wear purple which was Audrii’s favorite color. A private funeral ceremony will be held the next day for close friends and family only. Please respect us in our time of grieving as we lay our precious little Angel to rest.
If you wish to drop off flowers, cash or check donations in memory of Audrii Danielle Cunningham, please contact Livingston VFW Post 8568 at (936) 327-9119. (Please make checks payable to VFW8568 and put in the notes “Audrii Cunningham”.) A Venmo fund (Venmo@VFW8568) has also been set up to see Audrii to her final resting place. Proceeds exceeding funeral expenses will be donated in Audrii Cunningham’s name to Texas EquuSearch up to the 2nd of March 2024. Later donations will be expanded to include organizations that protect our children from sexual predators, and organizations that assist these children and their families who experience this kind of senseless violent crime.
Again, we would like to thank everyone who was involved in the search for Audrii, and we hope you will do the same for others going forward. God bless y’all and God bless the children.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
– Missing Livingston’s Audrii Cunningham never made it to school; When do districts notify parents?
– Person of interest spent time in prison for sexual contact with young girl
– What we know about ‘person of interest’ in case of missing 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham
– Person of interest was last person to see 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham morning of her disappearance
– Prayer service held for missing 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham from Livingston
– Investigators release photo of vehicle in connection to missing Livingston 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham
Copyright 2024 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.
Andrea (left), Pablo (center), and Martin Langesfeld (right) hold a photograph of their daughter and sister, Nicky Langesfeld and her husband Luis Sadovnic, at a park in Doral, Fla., where the city named a street Nicky Langesfeld Place to honor her memory, Martin says, “as a reminder that she’ll be here with us forever.” Nicole “Nicky” and Luis were two of the 98 people killed when the Champlain Towers South condominium building collapsed in Surfside on June 24, 2021.
Meredith Nierman/NPR
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Meredith Nierman/NPR
SURFSIDE, Fla. — Just around the corner from where a beachfront condominium collapsed five years ago, there’s a makeshift memorial: a plastic banner strung up on a wood frame, with the names of the 98 victims, ranging in age from a year-old infant to a 92-year-old grandmother.
“It’s an unfortunate reminder of how big this tragedy was,” says Martin Langesfeld, locating the name of his sister Nicky, 26, and her husband Luis Sadovnik, 28. “It’s more than just names. It’s stories. It’s families.”
Two-thirds of the 12-story Champlain Towers South building collapsed just after 1 a.m. on June 24, 2021. It started when the pool deck caved in. Seven minutes later, as many of the occupants were sleeping, the tower began to fall.
Five escaped, and three were rescued from the rubble with severe injuries by first responders. Search teams evacuated residents in the remaining part of the building, which was demolished 10 days later for safety reasons.
Search and rescue personnel work in the rubble of the 12-story, beachfront Champlain Towers South condominium that crumbled to the ground on June 24, 2021 in Surfside.
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Hundreds were left without a home and belongings, and the state was forced to grapple with how it regulates structural safety.
Langesfeld is among those who’ve been pushing to improve what they consider a lax system of building oversight. His sister and brother-in-law were newlyweds, who had moved into the condo together just a few months earlier.
“A dream place, home, where you feel you’re safest is where they were killed,” he says.
He’s also frustrated there is no permanent memorial honoring the victims, while a new luxury condo is going up on the land where Champlain Towers once stood.
“It’s been almost five years and there’s no development for the memorial,” he says. “And the development for the new building is very well underway.”
The North Tower of the Champlain Towers condominium complex stands on April 27, overlooking the vacant site where its sister building, Champlain Towers South, collapsed on June 24, 2021. The collapse resulted in 98 deaths and remains one of the largest structural failures in U.S. history. A new luxury condominium complex, the Delmore, is slated for construction on the empty lot.
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Technical findings released Monday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded the problem started about three weeks before the collapse when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed, causing cracks to grow and loads to shift to connections that were not strong enough to support them.
Investigators found “severe and widespread deviations in the building’s original structural design from the codes and standards of the day,” and that the building’s construction in 1981 deviated from the design drawings. Investigators will issue a final report later that includes recommendations for changes to standards, codes and practices to improve building safety.
To date, no one has been held criminally responsible.
But in a complex civil lawsuit, more than 30 defendants contributed to a $1.2 billion class action settlement reached just a year after the collapse to address wrongful death, personal injury and property loss claims.
“I think what was apparent to all parties, legal parties, is that it was an enormous loss,” says Coral Gables attorney Rachel Wagner Furst, co-lead counsel representing the Surfside victims.
None of the settling parties admitted liability or wrongdoing, but Wagner Furst says the litigation pointed to many factors that contributed to the scope of the disaster beyond the condo board, which was singled out in the initial lawsuit for not heeding warning signs and deferring repairs on the 40-year-old building.
She notes, “Companies and individuals who had serviced the Champlain Towers South condominium building in the years before the collapse that had arguably or allegedly failed in some way to provide proper maintenance advice or counsel, including the security company that had staffed the front desk of the building and was on duty at the time that the alarm ought to have sounded.”
Attorney Rachel Wagner Furst served as co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit for the victims of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, which resulted in a $1.2 billion settlement.
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The Surfside collapse was a wake-up call for condo associations and regulators around the country.
In the immediate aftermath in South Florida, some two dozen properties were evacuated for safety concerns. Most eventually were able to return after repairs.
The state responded by passing more stringent regulations, including new mandates for structural inspections and requiring condo associations to maintain a minimum level of reserve funding for structural upkeep.
“The Florida legislature pushed the burden to create safe housing stock in Florida onto the people who are least able to bear it, which is the Florida consumer,” says Ft. Lauderdale attorney Donna DiMaggio Berger who specializes in condominium law, and founded a group that lobbies on behalf of the more than 50,000 community associations in Florida.
She says developers also should share in the burden.
“If we wind up with the safest housing stock in the country. Bravo, well done,” she says. But “safe buildings start with the people who build them and repair them.”
Construction cranes line the skyline along the beach in Surfside, Fla., on April 27.
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No matter how well-intentioned, the building reforms could have unintended consequences, says Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
She says some buildings have been taken over by people who want to turn them into more expensive, luxurious developments.
“There’s tremendous pressure that people can’t afford these things and so they’re forced to sell,” she says. “We call it ‘condo vultures,’ and it is at our peril.”
Levine Cava says she understands that people want to live “the good life” in South Florida, but there must be balance.
“We know we live in paradise,” she says. “We also know that we need to have people of all means in our community.”
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava says her community was severely changed by this tragedy, “the pain is still very real. Many people have moved on with their lives and others are still suffering greatly.”
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That’s long been the conundrum in Florida, a trend that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic when people flocked to the Sunshine State.
And it’s evident in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach, which is becoming an ultra-wealthy enclave with a wall of condos lining the Atlantic, and more under construction. The area is adjacent to swanky shopping malls and private islands where tech titans have waterfront estates.
The Champlain Towers South property itself is soon to be home to the community’s latest luxury development, The Delmore. Billed as “expansive mansions in the sky,” the sales price of the units starts at $15 million; penthouses go for more than $150 million.
“Each penthouse has its own private pool, and that’s a glass-fronted pool that gets the view to the ocean,” says developer Jeffery Rossely, pointing to the layout on a scale model in a posh sales gallery.
Jeffery Rossely, a developer at the Dubai-based firm Damac Properties, points to a model of a luxury property called The Delmore.
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Rossely is with Damac Properties, a Dubai-based firm. This is the company’s first residential project in the U.S. Damac was the only bidder with a $120 million cash offer for the property.
“It was obviously at the time a tragic opportunity, but the courts had already ordered sale of the property,” Rossely says. “The money was required to compensate the victims.”
But the project has not received a warm welcome in Surfside. At town meetings he says his company has been accused of having blood on its hands.
A sign welcoming visitors to Surfside, Fla., stands directly across the street from the former site of the Champlain Towers South condominium. Today, a new luxury residential development called The Delmore is under construction on the empty lot where the tower once stood.
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“I didn’t understand why there would be angst for someone coming in and paying that money upfront,” says Rossely.
But in retrospect, he concedes, the project needed a different approach.
“We should have spent a bit more time on due diligence, on community reaction, rather than on the physical property itself,” Rossely says. “We went through what I would call the traditional due diligence. Maybe we should have gone through emotional due diligence, as well.”
The question now is whether people will want to live in the new building. There are no buyers yet in the pre-sale phase.
Meanwhile, the town of Surfside will light a torch at 1:15 a.m. on Wednesday, just outside the development’s fence, to remember the Champlain Towers South victims five years after the collapse.
News
Trump says proof of his allegations that vandals cut Reflecting Pool paint will be provided in court
Washington — President Trump on Monday said proof will be provided in court of his allegations that vandals “cut” a massive slit in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which he claims is the reason the paint is peeling on the recently renovated but algae-plagued project.
In an exchange with CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe, Mr. Trump insisted that vandals, rather than questionable craftsmanship, are responsible for the enduring problems following the $14.7 million sealant job. The president claimed vandals cut a 350-foot slit in the pool between the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. Five people have been arrested for vandalism related to the Reflecting Pool, and five additional individuals were issued federal citations, according to the U.S. Park Police, although neither the company behind the project nor the U.S. Park Service has said a cut slit was responsible for the peeling.
Asked if he had proof, such as photos or video, that vandals used a knife to cut a massive slit in the pool, Mr. Trump responded: “Well, let’s put it this way, when you have a 350, I think it’s 350, not 250, when you have a 350-foot slit, from one end to the other, you think that’s proof? You think that’s proof?”
O’Keefe noted that reporters had been to the site and found no evidence of a slit.
“Well, you’d have to go see the Parks Department. They’ll show it to you, or see, see the secretary, but I saw it,” Mr. Trump said, likely referencing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “They cut it, they cut it very violently. The same thing with the floor, they cut it, and then they lifted it. They pulled it, and that’s what it is.”
After defending the project, the president said, “We also have pictures.”
O’Keefe asked the president for evidence of his claims.
“Yeah, at the right time you’ll see it,” Mr. Trump said. “You’ll see it in court. You’ll see it in court, but all you have to do is call the Parks Department, call the Department of Interior.”
The president also suggested someone may have placed fertilizer in the water to create the algae that teams have been attempting to clear.
“If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae, but somebody said they might have put fertilizer, they did something to create the algae,” the president said, again without providing evidence for his claims.
CBS News has reached out to the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior. So far, there’s been no response.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, which received a no-bid contract to install the sealant on the floor of the Reflecting Pool, told CBS News there are “some areas” that “require repairs.”
“These areas are a very small part of the massive 7-acre project, and do not indicate a failure of the liner,” the company said. “These repairs can not be made until the pool is drained. As soon as it’s feasible for the park, the pool will be drained and AIC will be back to make those needed repairs as part of the warranty.”
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