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Murder victim's family questions Joyce Meyer Ministries

The ministry of televangelist Joyce Meyer may be added as a defendant to the wrongful-death lawsuit filed against a man charged with murdering his wife and two sons.

According to investigators, former security guard with Joyce Meyer Ministries, Chris Coleman, had called police from a gym on May 5 and asked a police officer who had investigated prior threats related to the family to check on them after calls to the house allegedly went unanswered.

When police got to the house later that morning, they found the bodies of Coleman’s 31-year-old wife Sheri and two children, 11-year-old Garett and 9-year-old Gavin, all strangled with some type of wire, rope or cord.

The proposed amendment to the suit, filed on behalf of the family of the slain mother of two, suggests that the May 5 killings of Sheri Coleman and her sons may not have occurred if Joyce Meyer Ministries had followed its own policy and taken action.

“The plaintiffs are informed, and believe, that JMM negligently and carelessly failed to do any of these things,” the suit claims.

It lists four possible courses of action, including confronting Chris Coleman “with the fact that JMM knew that he had written and delivered all three threats against his wife and children”, warning Sheri Coleman directly, turning the matter over to one or more police agencies, and immediately dismissing Chris Coleman from employment.

“As a direct or proximate result of one or more of these negligent acts or omissions by JMM, neither Sheri Coleman nor any police agency was properly warned of the danger to Sheri Coleman, Garrett Coleman, and Gavin Coleman; Christopher Coleman was not prevented from carrying out the threats he had written and delivered to JMM; and, instead, Christopher Coleman was able, without hindrance, to murder [his family] in their own home,” it adds.

The latest development comes nearly three months after JMM turned over 400 pages of documents that included Coleman's work timetable, salary, benefits, life insurance information, ministry's employee handbook and airline tickets and schedules on commercial flights and private airline passenger lists from JMM.

Though JMM was initially named a “respondent in discovery” in the case, Sheri Coleman’s family is asking the court to add the ministry as an additional defendant in the case, which will be heard at Monroe County Circuit Court in Waterloo, Montana.

If the family’s motion is granted, they would be seeking at least $50,000 from JMM, in addition to the costs of their suit.

In response to the new filing, JMM insisted that it had “directed that appropriate law enforcement be contacted regarding the threats”.

“The Ministry has cooperated in every respect with law enforcement in the investigation of these crimes," it added, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Previously, the ministry stated that "no reasonable person would suggest that any employer should be responsible for the criminal acts of its employees committed against his or her family outside of work just because that person is an employee".

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