Personal Injury Law

Trucker in Massive Highway 40 Accident Pleads Guilty to Causing Three Deaths

By Jeffrey Lowe

As a St. Louis semi truck accident attorney, I've written several posts here about the fatal trucking accident that took place on Highway 40 here in St. Louis in July of 2008. Fourteen people were injured and three were killed when a tractor-trailer driven by Jeffrey R. Knight, 51, of Muscle Shoals, AL, plowed into stopped traffic at the beginning of rush hour. Knight said he had had been reaching for his cell phone and allegedly failed to notice traffic conditions in front of him. He was charged about a year ago with three counts of involuntary manslaughter. Now, almost two years after the crash, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Knight has pleaded guilty to three counts of involuntary manslaughter and was allowed to go free. He was sentenced to one year for each death, to be served concurrently, and freed because of credit for the 371 days he had already spent in jail.

The crash killed Lydia Miller, 55, of Canton, Alvin Mast, 88, of Kahoka, and Charles "Keith" Cason, 55, of Caseyville. Miller and Mast were members of the Amish community who were heading to a funeral with the help of a hired driver; Cason was a copier salesman. Four of Cason?s relatives attended Knight?s sentencing, and prosecutors say the one-year sentence was settled on with the agreement of victims? families. One of the 14 people injured was Mark Tiburzi, who was severely brain damaged by the crash and is unable to walk or talk. His wife, Cheryl Tiburzi of St. Peters, said she didn?t know the sentencing was happening and didn?t know what to think. Mark Tiburzi now lives in a nursing home where he can get the 24-hour care he now needs. The Tiburzis were awarded $18 million in a lawsuit against Knight and his former trucking company, Holmes Transport, Inc., but Cheryl Tiburzi says she doesn?t expect to see any of that money. Other families had filed their own claims against Knight and Holmes Transport.

As a Missouri big rig accident lawyer, I know that avoidable accidents involving driver distraction and inattention like this one are unfortunately quite common. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Large Truck Crash Causation Study attributes 29% of fatal crashes in which truck drivers were at fault to driver distraction and inattention. This is true of smaller passenger cars as well; in fact, the federal Department of Transportation has made distracted driving a centerpiece of its traffic safety efforts over the past year. Sadly, it is all too common for any error by a truck driver to have terrible consequences for drivers of smaller vehicles, which cannot protect people from the tremendous force that large, heavy tractor-trailers wield in a crash. As a truck driver, Knight had a legal responsibility to live up to a higher standard than drivers of passenger cars do, because his mistakes had much worse repercussions.

Full post as published by Trucking Accident Attorney Blog on April 20, 2010 (boomark / email).