Maria Elisa Pineda, the mother of the deceased child, in Conroe, Texas.Gustavo Huerta / AP
Cristian Pavon, 11, died in his mobile home last Tuesday outside Houston (Texas) when winter storms left millions of residents of the southern state without electricity or heat.
María Elisa Pineda found her son dead in the morning, when temperatures reached -12 degrees.
The boy's family has sued Entergy Texas, his electricity provider, and the Texas Electrical Reliability Council (Ercot), the state's overseer of utility distribution, for negligence over the weekend.
The medical examiner's office has yet to release the cause of the boy's death.
The lawsuit, one of the first legal actions against Texas energy providers after the disaster, claims that the minor died of hypothermia and seeks compensation of more than 100 million dollars.
In the complaint, they allege that Cristian would not have died if the two lawsuit companies had alerted residents that the power outages would last several days during the exceptional cold wave.
The family lives in a mobile home in the small town of Conroe, where at the time of his death he had been without power for more than 24 hours, according to
The Washington Post
.
Last week Entergy Texas and other Texas electricity providers imposed continuous blackouts beginning last Monday due to unprecedented demand for electricity during the worst snowfall in state history.
At the same time, several electric generators froze, resulting in more than four million Texans being without electricity, heat or water for three days, and tens of thousands more being left in the dark for several more days.
At least 58 people have died from causes related to the cold wave in the central and eastern parts of the country, 32 of them in Texas.
Cristian's family accuses the energy providers of failing to warn that the outages would be prolonged for residents to take preventive measures.
Attorney Tony Buzbee, who represents the plaintiffs, argued in an interview with television station KTRK that the companies made decisions based on generating profits rather than keeping customers safe, as they ignored recommendations to upgrade the electrical infrastructure for winter after a severe winter storm in 2011. Because the Texas network operates independently from the rest of the country, it is not subject to federal regulation that establishes equipment standards.
Jaliza Yera, a relative of the deceased minor, activated a fundraising page to help the minor's parents move the child's body to Honduras, his country of origin.
This Tuesday the accumulated amount is greater than 88,000 dollars.
"His wish was to see his grandparents again and that is what his mother wants to do," reads the description of the campaign on the gofoundme.com website.
Cristian arrived in Texas in 2019 to reunite with his mother, whom he had not seen for over a year, according to Univision.
"We are deeply saddened by the loss of life in our community," an Entergy Texas spokesperson told
The Washington Post
, adding that they could not comment on the matter due to pending litigation.
ERCOT said in a statement that it is reviewing the litigation and defended the decision to impose blackouts.
"The Texas Electric Reliability Council has been anything but reliable for the past 48 hours," criticized Republican Governor Greg Abbott last Tuesday, ordering an investigation into the catastrophic power grid failure.