The parents of a toddler who drowned in his backyard swimming pool after passing through a locked sliding glass door have sued the lock’s manufacturer, Okefan, as well as Amazon for negligence and wrongful death.
On April 21, 2023, 3-year-old twin brothers Kai and Liam Bernabe accessed the pool in their backyard through a recently installed glass door child lock, which their mother had purchased on Amazon only months before.
The boys and their parents (Jasmine Coleman and Mark Barnabe) had been napping when the twins woke up and decided to go outside through the locked sliding door while their parents slept.
Using a chair, they were able to reach the mechanism to unlock the “child proof safety device,” which allowed the twins to enter the backyard. “The lock failed and unlatched,” the lawsuit states.
According to a home surveillance video that documented most of the incident, both boys entered the swimming pool.
Within minutes, their mother woke up and seeing the boys missing, went directly to the backyard and found her unconscious son, Kai, in the shallow end, where she retrieved him and ran into the house, yelling for the boys’ father to find Liam. She immediately started CPR.
Mark, who had been sleeping, ran outside and found Liam in the deep end of the swimming pool. He immediately called 911, but no ambulance was immediately sent to the residence because none were immediately available.
When the ambulance arrived, emergency personnel transported the twins to the hospital.
TheunconsciousLiamwasincritical condition but ultimately survived the incident. Kai was pronounced dead at the hospital.
On March 14, 2025, the twin’s parents filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the lock and Amazon. com, the online retail marketplace.
According to the lawsuit, Jasmine Coleman purchased the Okefan-brand child-proof lock from Amazon to prevent her twins from wandering into the backyard and into the swimming pool.
The complaint states that Jasmine was drawn to the listing for the lock because of its “Amazon-advertised safety features.”
An Amazon listing reads: “This kid stopper has been proven to withstand the pulls and tugs of babies and children, keep doors and windows opened (sic) and safe!”
“Includes pry resistant door, durable double layer steel housing and seamlessly welded pry-proof steel body for the ultimate protection against break in.”
According to the lawsuit, when the lock was delivered from Amazon, Jasmine “followed the enclosed operating instructions and installed the locking mechanism on her home’s sliding glass doors as intended.”
The lawsuit alleges that the lock was manufactured and designed defectively and that manufacturers “failed to conduct adequate testing” and that the door lock is made accessible to “a small child with just a bit of force despite being advertised as ‘pry proof.’” The suit argues that the defendants knowingly engaged in conduct that exposed users to a serious potential danger.
“As such, this conduct was an act in conscious disregard of the safety of such persons as plaintiffs, constituting malicious and oppressive conduct such that it presents the proper circumstance for the imposition of punitive and exemplary damages, in such amount according to proof at trial.”
In the company’s response, Amazon stated that if the lock were defective and dangerous “it did not know and had no reason to know that.”
The company has also denied that it was negligent in the case or is liable.
It adds that the family “may have misused, abused, altered, and/ or improperly maintained, and/ or used the product in a manner other than it was intended to be used, and disregarded the warnings, instructions, and directions for the product’s use.”
Jasmine Coleman and Mark Barnabe have asked for a jury trial and a minimum of $2 million in damages. A court date has been scheduled for early May.
