An unpublished opinion of the North Carolina Court of Appeals does not constitute 

controlling legal authority. Citation is disfavored, but may be permitted in accordance 

with the provisions of Rule 30(e)(3) of the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure.

NO. COA13-910

NORTH CAROLINA COURT OF APPEALS

Filed: 6 May 2014

CHRISTIAN MURILLO PAREDONES and 

GISELL GUADALUPE MURILLO 

PAREDONES, Minor Children of 

Decedent-Employee FELIPE PACHECO 

FLORES a/k/a MURILLO ARELLANO 

GUMERCINDO,

Plaintiffs

v. North Carolina

Industrial Commission

I.C. No. W60905

WRENN BROTHERS, Employer, and 

CONTINENTAL INDEMNITY COMPANY, 

Carrier,

Defendants

Appeal by plaintiffs from opinion and award entered 9 April 

2013 by the North Carolina Industrial Commission. Heard in the 

Court of Appeals 8 January 2014.

Moody, Williams, Roper & Lee, LLP, by C. Todd Roper, for 

plaintiff-appellants.

Hedrick Gardner Kincheloe & Garofalo, LLP, by M. Duane 

Jones and Vachelle D. Willis, for defendant-appellees.

CALABRIA, Judge.

Christian Murillo Paredones and Gisell Guadalupe Murillo

Paredones (collectively “plaintiffs”), the minor children of 
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Felipe Pacheco Flores a/k/a Murillo Arellano Gumercindo 

(“Flores”), appeal from an opinion and award entered by the Full 

Commission of the North Carolina Industrial Commission (“the 

Commission”) which denied plaintiffs’ claim for workers’ 

compensation death benefits. The Full Commission concluded that 

Flores’s death did not arise out of his employment with Wrenn 

Brothers (“defendant-employer”). We affirm.

Flores came to the United States from Mexico and used 

falsified documentation to obtain employment in defendantemployer’s lumber mill in Siler City, North Carolina in 1996. 

On 8 September 2008, Flores was working in the planer room of 

defendant-employer’s plant when one of his fellow workers 

indicated that the plant was about to be raided by the 

Immigration and Naturalization Service (“INS”). Flores and 

others attempted to run away, but after 100 yards Flores 

collapsed and died. An autopsy later determined that Flores had 

suffered a fatal heart attack.

On 18 December 2009, the administrator of Flores’s estate 

filed a Form 18 seeking workers’ compensation benefits for 

Flores’s death. Defendant-employer denied the claim, which was 

then assigned for hearing. On 8 October 2012, Deputy 

Commissioner Philip A. Baddour filed an opinion and award
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denying plaintiffs’ claim because Flores’s death did not arise 

out of his employment with defendant-employer. Plaintiffs then 

appealed to the Full Commission, which affirmed the deputy 

commissioner’s opinion and award on 9 April 2013. Plaintiffs 

appeal.

Review of an opinion and award of the Industrial Commission 

“is limited to consideration of whether competent evidence 

supports the Commission’s findings of fact and whether the 

findings support the Commission’s conclusions of law. This 

‘court’s duty goes no further than to determine whether the 

record contains any evidence tending to support the finding.’” 

Richardson v. Maxim Healthcare/Allegis Grp., 362 N.C. 657, 660, 

669 S.E.2d 582, 584 (2008) (citation omitted) (quoting Anderson 

v. Lincoln Constr. Co., 265 N.C. 431, 434, 144 S.E.2d 272, 274 

(1965)).

Plaintiffs argue that the Commission erred by concluding 

that Flores’s death was not compensable. We disagree.

“For an injury to be compensable under the Worker’s 

Compensation Act, the claimant must prove three elements: (1) 

that the injury was caused by an accident; (2) that the injury 

was sustained in the course of the employment; and (3) that the 

injury arose out of the employment.” Hollar v. Furniture Co., 48 
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N.C. App. 489, 490, 269 S.E.2d 667, 669 (1980). In the instant 

case, the Commission concluded that plaintiffs were not entitled 

to death benefits because they failed to prove that Flores’s 

death arose out of his employment.

The words “arising out of the employment”

refer to the origin or cause of the 

accidental injury. [A] contributing 

proximate cause of the injury must be a risk 

inherent or incidental to the employment, 

and must be one to which the employee would 

not have been equally exposed apart from the 

employment. Under this “increased risk”

analysis, the causative danger must be 

peculiar to the work and not common to the 

neighborhood.

Chavis v. TLC Home Health Care, 172 N.C. App. 366, 372, 616 

S.E.2d 403, 409 (2005)(internal quotations and citations

omitted). In its opinion and award denying plaintiffs’ claim, 

the Commission found that Flores “died as a result of his 

attempt to evade what he believed to be an imminent raid by 

immigration officials.” The Commission further found that 

Flores “was equally exposed to the risks associated with being 

an illegal immigrant, including being apprehended due to his 

illegal status, apart from his employment.” Based upon these 

findings, the Commission concluded that Flores’s death did not 

arise from his employment.
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Plaintiffs argue that the Commission’s findings were not 

supported by the evidence. Specifically, plaintiffs point to 

evidence that defendant-employer had twenty-five to thirty 

Hispanic employees, that there were chicken plants in the area 

which had recently been raided by INS, and that defendantemployer had increased awareness of immigration raids. 

Plaintiffs contend that this evidence demonstrated that 

defendant-employer was subject to a heightened risk of an 

immigration raid and that this heightened risk was inherent to 

Flores’s employment.

However, the Commission specifically determined that this 

evidence was insufficient to support plaintiffs’ theory, finding 

that there was no direct evidence that the racial makeup of

defendant-employer’s workforce increased the risk of an 

immigration raid. This finding is supported by the evidence 

presented during the hearing. Defendant-employer’s secretary 

Robert Wrenn specifically testified that there had been no 

immigration raids in Siler City, where defendant-employer’s 

plant was located. Moreover, the fact that defendant-employer 

had many Hispanic employees proves nothing in and of itself. 

There was no evidence that these Hispanic employees were not 

legal workers or that defendant-employer sought to hire illegal 
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workers. There was also no evidence presented that defendantemployer had any knowledge that Flores had falsified documents 

in order to obtain employment from defendant-employer. In the 

absence of any direct connection between defendant-employer and 

undocumented workers, the Commission was free as the finder of 

fact to reject the inference that plaintiffs attempted to draw 

between defendant-employer’s Hispanic employees and a possible 

immigration raid. See Cooper v. Cooper Enters., Inc., 168 N.C. 

App. 562, 564, 608 S.E.2d 104, 106 (2005)(“The Industrial 

Commission is the sole judge of the weight and credibility of 

the evidence[.]” (internal quotations and citation omitted)).

Ultimately, the Commission’s findings (1) that Flores died 

while fleeing from an apparent immigration raid and (2) that 

there was no evidence of an increased risk to Flores of an 

immigration raid as part of his employment with defendantemployer were supported by competent evidence. These findings 

adequately demonstrated that Flores’s death was caused by a risk 

which was neither “inherent or incidental to the employment” nor 

a risk to which Flores “would not have been equally exposed 

apart from the employment.” Chavis, 172 N.C. App. at 372, 616 

S.E.2d at 409. Thus, the Commission properly concluded that 

Flores’s death did not arise out of his employment and that, as 
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a result, plaintiffs were not entitled to workers’ compensation 

benefits. The Commission’s opinion and award denying 

plaintiffs’ claim is affirmed.

Affirmed.

Judges BRYANT and GEER concur.

Report per Rule 30(e).