The self-proclaimed pastor of a sketchy Texas church filed a $3.1 million claim against the owners of the Champlain Towers condominium in Surfside, Florida claiming that half a dozen of his parishioners had residences destroyed in the collapse of the towers in 2021, the Miami Herald reports.
Another claimant, a man from Oregon, claims he just happened to take up an offer from a stranger to stay at a friend’s condo in the towers after driving to Surfside, and within minutes, he heard a rumble and then blacked out when a chuck of concrete hit his head. Upon regaining consciousness, he simply left the scene and drove back to Oregon. He never mentioned his experience to anyone prior to filing his claim. “I just want that part of my mind gone,” the 33-year-old Oregon man said in his compensation application. “I wish I could somehow erase that part, but I cannot.”
The claims were filed as part of a class action settlement totaling $1.1 billion designated for claims by survivors and family members of the victims of the building collapse. One of the 741 applications for a share of the settlement, “Rev. Kelly Dean Ph.D.” of Baptist Faith Church in Dallas claimed his alleged parishioners lived in six units in the towers, but the unit numbers on the claim didn’t match any units in any of the complex.
