MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – The family of Peniel “P.J.” Janvier is one step closer to receiving a settlement awarded back in May of 2024 following the Miami Beach recreation leader’s tragic drowning in a Miami Beach public pool in 2022.
SB 14 passed unanimously (37-0) yesterday.
The bill authorizes Miami Beach to pay $1.7 million “to the Estate of Peniel Janvier“ as compensation for injuries and damages sustained as a result of the negligence of the city of Miami Beach; providing a limitation on the payment of compensation and attorney fees.”
The settlement is not official until the House passes its version. According to the bill’s history, it was added to the second reading calendar last week. Local 10 viewers can track HB 6519by clicking here.
Over the phone, Janvier’s mother, Nicole Mathurin, said if she could have anything, it would be having her son back, describing her life as “a puzzle with a piece forever missing.”
In August of 2022, the Senate bill explains that someone pushed P.J. into the community pool at the Scott Rakow Youth Center in the City of Miami Beach.
He drowned, it states, after city lifeguards and personnel “failed to observe and respond to Mr. Janvier being pushed.”
State Senator Shevrin Jones said Janvier, 28, “struggled for 12 minutes before dying,” and that “lifeguards and staff on site neglected him because they were distracted by their phones.”
The Estate of Peniel Janvier has alleged in a lawsuit it filed in 2023 that it was the “negligence of the city of Miami Beach through its lifeguards and personnel that was the proximate cause” of his death.
In 2022, Miami Beach police said P.J. was a summer camp coach for the Scott Rakow Center. He was monitoring the kids in the pool during an end-of-summer pool event at the time of the incident.
During a news conference in 2022, an attorney representing the family said it was the brain damage their client’s son had sustained that led them to believe he had been underwater for at least more than 15 minutes. He also stated there were “rumors” that the lifeguard on duty had been on his phone.
Jones said the city and the state settled the claim for $2 million under Florida’s sovereign immunity law. He said the city of Miami Beach paid the estate the maximum allowed allotment of $300,000, but the remaining $1.7 million is contingent on legislative approval.
The Miami Herald reported in 2022 that two Miami Beach employees were suspended and another was fired, but criminal charges are not expected.