March 10, 2010

By Russell Carter, Womack Publishing Service

A Gretna woman filed a $15 million lawsuit Thursday in Pittsylvania County Circuit Court on behalf of her 12-year-son who drowned in 2008 at Smith Mountain Lake State Park.

Dora Mae Henley is suing Sycamore Baptist Church and the Commonwealth of Virginia, along with lifeguards, chaperones and a park ranger.

Henley’s son, Marvin Strickland Jr., was at Smith Mountain Lake State Park with a youth group from Sycamore Baptist Church when he drowned Aug. 7, 2008.

Strickland was found in 6-7 feet of water around 20 feet from the shore.

The Virginia Conservation and Recreation Department, which investigated the drowning, estimated Strickland had been missing about 15 minutes before lifeguards began searching for the youth.

After Strickland was reported missing, lifeguards removed everyone from the water and began diving in the area the boy was last seen.

He was found 20-30 minutes later.

In addition to Sycamore Baptist Church, the lawsuit names Kathy Mohilan, director of youth programs for the church, as well as adult chaperones Lonnie Rowland, Cindy Rowland and Annie Rowland Jones.

Others named in the lawsuit include Anna Woodford, the head lifeguard at the park; lifeguards Joey Nance and Austin Wood; and park ranger Meredith Bennett.

According to the lawsuit, Strickland was among six children from Sycamore Baptist Church who went swimming at the state park.

“When taking the youth group, including Master Strickland, on the trip to the state park, the adult chaperones, and each of them individually, expressly or impliedly assumed duties to supervise and care for Master Strickland for the duration of the trip,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit claims the chaperones were responsible for Strickland’s care on the trip, lifeguards were responsible for watching the boy while he was in the park and the park ranger was responsible for making sure lifeguards were properly trained.

Henley, who is represented by the Roanoke law firm of Crandall & Katt, is seeking $15 million for sorrow and grief, loss of her son’s income and his funeral expenses.

The plaintiff also asked for $350,000 in punitive damages.

March 10, 2010

By: Jackie Soto, WGN News

CHICAGO – A new warning for parents: Your baby can suffocate if you carry them in popular infant slings, that strap around your chest.

The head of the Consumer Product Safety commission says there have been too many deaths linked to the slings especially with small babies.

The sling wraps around the parents neck cradling the baby in a C-like position.

Consumer reports say the C-like position can cause the baby, who has no head or neck control, to flop its head forward, chin-to-chest and suffocate into a parent’s chest or belly.

Posted March 2, 2010

By wsfb.com

STAMFORD, Conn. — A man was killed in a Tuesday morning collision with a tractor-trailer on Interstate 95 in Stamford.

Police said a Toyota Sienna driven by Xiaoyuan Huang, 28, was either stopped or traveling slowly in the right, northbound lane of Interstate 95 before 5 a.m. Police said Clarence Edwards came up behind Huang’s vehicle in a tractor-trailer. They said Edwards attempted to swerve around the Toyota, but struck the rear of the car.

The Toyota went into the roadway’s right shoulder, striking a metal guardrail. The tractor-trailer traveled into the median and struck the barrier, police said.

Huang was extricated from his vehicle and taken to Stamford Hospital, where he later died. Edwards was uninjured in the crash.

The crash, which closed northbound lanes of the roadway for hours, remains under investigation.

Tom Bowen said he commutes to Stamford from Long Island, usually on Interstate 95, but said he took back roads on Tuesday.

“I used to work in the local area and I know the local roads,” he said.

By suntimes.com

BLUE ISLAND — A man died in an accident while at work Monday in south suburban Blue Island.

Brian Fuller Sr., 48, of La Grange, was pronounced dead at 1:03 a.m. at MetroSouth Medical Center in Blue Island, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. Fuller died at 2258 Vermont St. in Blue Island.

George J. Roll & Sons, a building material supplier company, is located at that address, according to an online directory. No one was immediately available from the company.

Fuller Sr. was killed when he was pinned in by a truck, an official said.

Fuller’s son, Brian Fuller Jr., 23, said his father had worked with the company for more than 15 years and was in charge of loading trucks in the dry wall and lumber yards.

“He worked a strenuous job that was incredibly hard and no one else would do,” Fuller said. “He put my sister and I through college.”

Fuller Jr. described his father as a family man who was “there for us.” In his free time, he was an avid muskie fisherman, he said.

The muskie or muskellunge fish is a trophy fish that is highly prized by fishermen, according to an online site.

Fuller Sr. left behind his son, daughter Alyssa, and wife Kathleen, to whom he was married for 25 years, Fuller Jr. said.

Neither the Blue Island police or fire department would comment.

No one was immediately available from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

By Christopher Tuffley

www.newssun.com

SEBRING –Two fatalities have been confirmed by the Florida Highway Patrol in the charter bus crash that occurred at 2:15 p.m. Monday afternoon on U. S. 27 at the intersection with Lake Francis Road.

The bus, chartered by South Florida Community College for its Exploritas program, was traveling north, returning from a tour of the Lake Placid murals at the time of the crash.

FHP Lt. Chris Miller confirms that Alice J. Adams, 81, a resident of Lake Placid, was driving east on Lake Frances Road in a 2010 red Mercury when she attempted to enter the northbound lanes of U. S. 27.

At this time it is unclear why Adams failed to yield the right of way to the bus.

Larry L. Metzer, 69, the bus driver, attempted to avoid the Mercury, but the front right of the car struck the left side of the bus. That blow caused the bus to veer off onto the east shoulder of the highway where it overturned into a ditch.

This resulted in the ejection of several passengers and there were extensive injuries.

Thirty-two people, including the driver, were on the bus at the time of the crash. Only one person was not transported to a hospital.

Two were pronounced dead at the scene, three had critical injuries and the rest had serious to minor injuries. Aeromed and Bay Life were two of the several companies providing helicopter evacuation. At least five helicopters picked up victims.

Becky Rousch, who directs community education for SFCC, was on the bus.

Deborah Bell, spokesperson for SFCC, reports Rousch is resting comfortably and recovering.

Of the 11 victims transported to Florida Hospital in Lake Placid, two were later airlifted to larger hospitals and nine remained hospitalized as of Tuesday morning.

Tiffany Bender, spokes person for Florida Hospital, said Tuesday that Florida Hospital, Heartland Division had been expecting 12 victims at the Sebring emergency room, but half of those victims were airlifted directly from the scene and only six victims were transported to the Sebring campus. Of that number two remain hospitalized locally and four were later flown to Orlando.

Highlands Regional Medical Center received seven victims.

John Dunn, spokesperson for Tampa General Hospital, said Tuesday morning that six victims were airlifted to the hospital, three directly from the scene and three from Highlands County hospitals.

Hospitals in Orlando also took in the injured, and Lee Memorial Hospital in Ft. Myers took in one.

Early reports indicated the bus passengers were all from Boston, Mass.

Exploritas, an independent company which SFCC uses in its community education program, is based in Boston, but the tourists on the bus came from many different states, including Indiana and Virginia. Bell said the day of the crash was the first day of a week-long program.

The bus had been on its way to deliver the tourists to their hotel.

“Right now we are focusing on the individuals and their families,” Bell said. “We are working closely with local authorities and Exploritas.”

Posted Friday, February 19. 2010

www.Fayobserver.com

CLINTON – One person is dead and two more were in critical condition after the trusses of a church roof under construction collapsed Thursday afternoon.

Sampson County Interim County Manager Susan Holder said the accident happened around 4:25 p.m. at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church on the 3700 block of Faison Highway northeast of Clinton.

Holder said the two surviving construction workers were taken by helicopter to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, where they were in critical condition Thursday evening. All three victims worked for Clifton Halso Construction of Chinquapin.

The names of the workers were being withheld, Holder said, until the family of the deceased is notified and until the N.C. Department of Labor determines the cause of the accident.

The workers were working on the roof of what was planned to be a new sanctuary for the church, Holder said.

By Jay Sorgi, www.620WTMJ.com

February 16, 2010

February 7, 2010

Middletown, Connecticut (CNN) — Five people were killed and at least 12 were injured in a gas explosion Sunday at an under-construction power plant in central Connecticut, local officials said.

Residents up to 20 miles away reported hearing the blast at about 11:19 a.m. at the Kleen Power Plant in Middletown, a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut.

“There is no present or continuing threat to anybody from either substances getting into the atmosphere or of a possible subsequent explosion,” Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said, adding terrorism has been ruled out.

He said plant workers were purging a natural gas pipeline when the explosion occurred.

“Urban search-and-rescue teams are on the premises … with dogs, attempting to locate and account for further victims,” Giuliano said.

It’s unknown how many people were working in the plant, which was about 95 percent complete, at the time of the explosion. Multiple contractors were involved in the project, Giuliano said, complicating efforts to account for those who may have been on the site.

“[Each contractor] has their own foreperson, their own employee list, so we’re trying to sort that out,” Giuliano said.

Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano said later Sunday that no one has come forward with any names of missing people and dogs have not detected signs of life beneath the rubble left by the explosion.

The plant was expected to go online this summer, Giuliano said.

Santostefano initially said about 50 people, most of them construction workers, were working at the time, but Giuliano said “we don’t know that as a hard number right now.”

“What I’ve been told by the owners of the project is that there could be anywhere from 100 to 200 people working on the site on any given day,” Giuliano said.

But Santostefano later said the numbers Giuliano cited were weekday figures, and he repeated his estimate of 50 to 60 people at the site Sunday when the explosion occurred. He said he thought most of those escaped the blast.

A no-fly zone was established over the site because of the unstable structure, Gov. Jodi Rell announced Sunday night.

Middlesex Hospital in Middletown said it received 11 patients from the explosion. One patient with serious injuries was flown to a hospital in Hartford, and another was transferred to Yale New Haven Hospital, according to a statement on Middlesex’s Web site. Two others had minor injuries and were treated and released. The remaining seven patients sustained injuries “mainly to the extremities, including broken bones, blunt trauma and abdominal pains,” the statement said.

Emergency room physician Dr. Jonathan Bankoff told reporters that some patients reported being thrown 30 or 40 feet by the blast.

Two people were airlifted directly to the Hartford hospital from the scene, Middlesex spokesman R. Brian Albert said. A center was being set up at Middletown’s City Hall for relatives of plant workers, he said.

As of late Sunday afternoon, the hospital said it was not expecting more patients from the plant.

After the explosion, it took a while for emergency crews to get into the plant, Santostefano said, because the plant was on fire and the natural gas had to be turned off at the source. No major incidents at the site had been reported since construction began there a couple of years ago, he said.

People miles away reported hearing or feeling the blast.

“It felt like the house was shaking,” Peter Moore, who lives about 10 miles away in Durham, told CNN. He said he thought at first there had been a traffic accident on his street or there was a problem with his house.

Moore said his mother, who lives in Woodbridge, about 20 miles away from the plant, also said she heard the explosion, and said it “sounded like someone pounded on the back door a couple of times.”

“It was almost like an earthquake,” nearby resident Lynn Townsend told CNN affiliate WTNH. She said she heard the explosion and went outside to see “a very big, bright orange flame” between the plant’s two smokestacks, and immediately dialed 911.

“It really shook the house,” she said. “Everybody was scared. The kids started to cry.

Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance told WTNH his agency has received “an immense amount of inquiries” from residents who heard or felt the explosion.

If you or anyone you know was injured or killed in the power plant gas explosion, please feel free to contact the Hayes Firm online or call 1-800-603-6833.  We will work to find the best attorney in your area to advise you and fight for your rights. 

From Times Online

February 3, 2010

Airlines in the United States have been told to review their flying standards after the crash of a commuter jet was officially blamed on elementary error by the captain.

The crash of the Colgan Air turbo-prop, which killed 50 people at Buffalo, New York, a year ago, was caused by Captain Marvin Renslow pulling the control column the wrong way, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said in its report on the accident.

The warning over poor performance on the flight deck echoed a view among experts in the US and Europe that some pilots lack old-fashioned skills in the automated cockpits of modern airliners.

On the Colgan Bombardier airliner, an automatic “stick shaker” vibrated the columns to alert the pilots that the aircraft was flying too slowly as it approached to land at Buffalo. Mr Renslow, 47, pulled back, raising the aircraft’s nose. This triggered an aerodynamic stall, sending the Bombardier airliner into an uncontrolled dive to the ground. All 49 onboard died as well as a man on the ground.

All pilots, from their first lesson, are taught never to raise the nose of an aircraft that is close to stalling. Lowering the nose — which is counter to instinct — increases the speed of the air over the wings, ensuring that lift is maintained.

The NTSB said: “The captain’s response to stick shaker activation should have been automatic, but his improper flight control inputs were inconsistent with his training and were instead consistent with startle and confusion.”

Neither the captain or Rebecca Shaw, the 24-year-old first officer, appeared to have recognised that the aircraft was approaching a stall, it said.

The NTSB also noted a series of failures by the crew on the airliner, which was operating as a Continental Connection flight. Ms Shaw sent text messages from her mobile telephone while preparing for take-off from Newark, New Jersey. There was a misunderstanding between captain and co-pilot on the setting of a minimum speed alert. Before take-off the captain set it at a higher than standard speed to allow for possible icing but the co-pilot was unaware of this. Neither noticed ample visual warnings that speed was dropping to the minimum. There was unnecessary chatter between the crew. Ms Shaw was also tired from flying cross-country overnight to start her shift and she was suffering from a heavy cold.

The NTSB called on airlines to improve their crew training and procedures. That echoed an internal report in Air France last year, which raised the alarm over complacency and told its pilots that they needed to brush up on their technique as aviators. They should spend time hand-flying small aircraft, it told them.

The NTSB report also warned against the dangers of using mobile telephones and other appliances while in the pilot’s seat. “Distractions caused by personal portable electronic devices affect flight safety because they can detract from a flight crew’s ability to monitor and cross-check instruments, detect hazards, and avoid errors,” it said. Similar advice came after the incident last autumn when a Northwest Airlines aircraft overflew its destination airport in Minneapolis because the pilots’ attention was focused on a discussion that involved using their laptop computers.

The NTSB noted other factors related to the Colgan crash, on a snowy night on February 12, 2009. Captain Renslow had failed five performance checks over the course of his flying career, although his employer knew of only three. The crew had failed to follow standard procedures for communicating between themselves and cross-checking their actions.

Contrary to earlier assumptions on the accident, the aircraft was not suffering from iced wings when it slowed to land. When the stick-shaker began, the aircraft was not yet in a stalled state. The smooth air-flow over the wings and tail was only disrupted when he pulled back on the column, over-riding the stick-pusher that comes into action automatically as a last resort on the edge of a stall.

Deborah Hersman, head of the NTSB, said that the accident casts doubt on the safety standards at regional US airlines compared with the major carriers.

By: Dave Nethers, Fox 8 News

January 28, 2010

BROOK PARK, Ohio — A local truck driver has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, accused of causing a fatal accident in Buffalo, New York last month.

Investigators say 45-year-old Thomas Wallace, of Brook Park, was distracted by pornography he was watching on his lap-top computer at the time of the accident.

They also say he had no more than about 4 hours of sleep in the previous 27 hours, which is a violation of federal trucking rules.

According to authorities, Wallace hit the car in which 33-year-old Julie Stratton of Snyder, New York was sitting.

Police say that Stratton had just hit a deer. Her damaged car was sitting in a lane on an open stretch of highway when it was struck.

Shortly after the accident, Stratton’s family pleaded for Buffalo area residents — who saw the accident — to come forward.

“I’m always looking for the truth and I’m sure it will be revealed,” said her emotional father Brian Dopkin.

Captain Michael Nigrelli of the New York State Police tells Fox 8 News the road was clear on the day of the accident. “Visibility was fine, there was no snow on the roads.”

Nigrelli says other vehicles were able to see and avoid Stratton, but investigators believe Wallace’s eyes were not on the road.

Wallace is being held in the Genesee County Jail in New York on a $50,000 cash bond.