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Dallas Parents File Wrongful Death Lawsuit After Pedestrian Accident
Posted on Feb 24, 2011
Dallas County is facing a wrongful death lawsuit from a family who says that the government is responsible for their son’s fatal accident.
According to the Dallas News Crime Blog, a Texas wrongful death trial will begin on March 1 in Dallas County regarding a deadly pedestrian accident that occurred in 2008.
Three years ago, Dallas County Sheriff’s Deputy John Ludwigs was responding to a call regarding a disturbance when he entered the onramp to I-45. Even though he was speeding, he did not engage the lights or sirens of his car to warn people in the area. Seconds after speeding up to get onto Interstate 45, he struck Richard Madrigal, who was running across the ramp.
Two years ago, the sheriff's accident review board ruled the pedestrian death an accident and said that Ludwigs couldn’t have acted any differently to prevent the fatality. Ludwigs, who has worked for the County for the last 14 years, has an otherwise clean record and stellar job evaluations.
While Ludwigs claims that the pedestrian ran directly in front of his car after Madrigal made eye contact with him, the dead man’s parents claim that their son was struck on the shoulder on the onramp and that the Deputy was negligent. In the wrongful death lawsuit, they state that their son would be alive today instead of suffering a gruesome death had the Sheriff’s Deputy acted responsible and turned on his lights. Dallas Country has responded by saying that they believe the young man died due to his own poor decisions in the second before his death, as he dashed across an interstate onramp.
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