Tag: car crashes
Dad died in burning Tesla because its futuristic doors wouldn’t open
A Tesla driver burned to death after a crash because the “futuristic handles” on his car trapped him inside and rescuers couldn’t open the doors, it is claimed.
Dr. Omar Awan, 48, lost control of his car, skidded across a road and smashed straight into a palm tree in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in February.
Smoke and then flames engulfed his blue Model S Tesla shortly after the crash.
A police officer arrived almost immediately, and crowds gathered outside the vehicle, but no one was able to save the father of five because of the “inaccessible door handles,” a lawsuit claims.
The car’s retractable door handles are meant to “auto-present” or pop out when they detect a key fob nearby.
But it malfunctioned, stopping first responders from opening the doors and saving Awan, it is claimed.
His loved ones are now suing the electric car company for wrongful death, alleging the car’s lithium-ion battery caught fire.
The smoke from this suffocated Awan and burned him from his feet upwards, it claimed.
The complaint said the car burned for hours, reigniting several times even after firefighters extinguished the flames and also when it was being towed away.
The lawsuit added: “After the Tesla hit the tree, he was alive. He had no internal injuries or broken bones.
He died from the smoke he inhaled as he sat locked inside the Tesla, despite that a police officer and others were there and ready to help, until flames forced them away.
“The fire engulfed the car and burned Dr. Awan beyond recognition — all because the Model S has inaccessible door handles, no other way to open the doors, and an unreasonably dangerous fire risk.”
The Sun has contacted Tesla for a statement.
The company’s lawyers have not yet responded in court.
Tesla, the maker of electric vehicles, claimed the Model S once achieved the “best safety rating of any car tested.”
Awan’s family lawyer Stuart Grossman described the victim as environmentally sensitive and safety conscious.
He insisted Awan could afford a Mercedes or another luxury vehicle but went with the 2016 Tesla because of its safety.
He added: “These things, they just love to burn. The car is so over-engineered.
“It’s so techy, it makes you want to buy a Chevy pickup truck.”
After the incident, Tesla said in a statement: “We understand that speed is being investigated as a factor in this crash, and know that high-speed collisions can result in a fire in any type of car, not just electric vehicles.”
His family is seeking more than $15,000 in damages.
The emergency guide says: “If the door handles do not function, open the door manually by reaching inside the window and using the interior door handle.”
It is not the first time Tesla has been blamed for a death.
In May 2018, Barrett Riley and his friend Edgar Monserratt, both 18, died when they lost control of Riley’s dad’s car at 116 mph.
Dad James Riley claimed Tesla is at fault for the speed, fire and the teens’ deaths.
Photo Credit: Local 10
Cliff plunge that killed family of 8 ruled a murder-suicide
Article via NewYorkTimes
Two women drugged themselves and their six adopted children before intentionally killing the entire family by driving off a California cliff last year, a special coroner’s jury has ruled.
A jury of eight women and six men unanimously found Thursday that Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 38, committed suicide and that their six children — ages 12 to 19 — died “at the hands of another, other than an accident” in the Mendocino County murder-suicide on March 26, 2018, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The jury’s verdict came after eight investigators and one pathologist testified that the women took steps in advance to intentionally kill their entire family by driving off a 100-foot cliff along Highway 1 near Westport with their drugged children inside their 2003 GMC Yukon.
“They both decided that this was going to be the end,” California Highway Patrol investigator Jake Slates said. “That if they can’t have their kids, that nobody was going to have those kids.”
The fatal crash — the largest mass murder in Mendocino County history, according to Sheriff and Coroner Tom Allman — happened just days after authorities in Washington state opened an investigation into the family after allegations surfaced that the children were being neglected.
The bodies of three of the children — 19-year-old Markis, as well as Jeremiah and Abigail, both 14 — were found outside the SUV. A medical examiner ruled Wednesday that both Jennifer and Sarah Hart, as well as Markis, Jeremiah and Abigail, died of broken necks.
The remains of Ciera, 12, were found weeks after the wreck in the Pacific Ocean, but her body was too decomposed to make a definitive ruling as to how she died. A partial foot found on a Northern California beach has been connected to 16-year-old Hannah, while the remains of the family’s sixth child, Devonte, 15, still have not been found.
Toxicology tests revealed that Jennifer Hart, who rarely drank, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.104 at the time, roughly the equivalent of five beers, investigators were told. And no one inside the SUV was believed to be wearing a seat belt, despite the fact that friends said Jennifer Hart regularly acted as a “seat belt Nazi,” often refusing to drive until her entire family buckled up, the Chronicle reported.
Separately, a search of Sarah Hart’s cellphone revealed Google searches inquiring what dosage of Benadyrl would kill a 120-pound woman, whether drowning would be painful and what common medications could be taken to prompt an overdose, the newspaper reports.
Toxicology reports found large doses of diphenhydramine — the active ingredient in Benadryl — in all of the victims. Slates said that the level found in Sarah Hart’s blood indicated she took 42 dosage units prior to the crash, while Markis had more than 19 doses in his blood.
“The children were more than likely unconscious,” Slates said. “Sarah would have been extremely intoxicated at that point.”
Despite the steps taken in advance of the fatal plunge, Slates said he didn’t think the Harts started their trip to California with the idea of killing themselves and their children. But at some point, that changed dramatically.
Read this update from January 2019 here
Devonte Hart’s Neighbors say they reported his parents before they plunged off the cliff
Woman found very much alive in morgue fridge
A woman was declared dead after suffering severe injuries in a car crash — but scared the life out of mortuary workers when they discovered she was still breathing.
The dead giveaway came when staffers at the Carleton morgue in South Africa pulled the woman’s body out of the refrigerator and found she was very much alive, according to Times Live.
The woman, who was not identified, was thought to have been fatally injured when she and others were ejected June 24 after a driver lost control of the car they were traveling in. Two others died.
Paramedics with Distress Alert, an ambulance company, checked her vitals and even used a machine, which showed no sign of life.
“This lady had severe and multiple injuries,” Distress Alert operations manager Gerrit Bradnick told the news site. “The injuries, especially to her head, were so bad, you could not work out her age or size.”
A mortuary source blamed the death debacle on paramedics.
“Paramedics are trained to determine death, not us,” the source said. “You never expect to open a fridge and find someone there alive. Can you imagine if we had begun the autopsy and killed her?”
The woman, from Gauteng, was immediately taken to Leratong Hospital in Krugersdorp, where she’s receiving care.
An investigation into the morbid mistake is under way, but Bradnick maintained that his company is not at fault.
“This did not happen because our paramedics are not properly trained,” he said. “There is no proof of any negligence by our crew.”
via: https://nypost.com/2018/07/02/woman-found-very-much-alive-in-morgue-fridge/
Woman accused of killing twin, pretended to be her to date her boyfriend
The Albany yogi accused of murdering her identical twin sister by driving off a cliff in Hawaii, dressed up as her dead sibling shortly after the crash and tried to hit on her boyfriend, the bereaved beau testified Tuesday.
The disturbing anecdote from the late Anastasia Duval’s boyfriend Federico Bailey came on the second day of sister Alexandria Duval’s murder trial.
“She began cuddling up on me, it seemed like she was flirting with me … she sat down beside me really close and lay her head on my shoulder,” Bailey told the courtroom in Maui, where Alexandria, 39, drove a white SUV off the road in May 2016 — a crash that killed her twin sister while she walked away relatively unscathed.
“She put on Anastasia’s clothes. I started talking to her about what happened, she avoided answering any of my questions.
“When I saw her in Anastasia’s dress it was disturbing. Anastasia had just worn that dress a few nights earlier,” added Bailey, who had lived with the two sisters and Alexandria’s boyfriend.
The three of them were on a camping trip at the time of the crash, and the siblings were fighting because Alexandria had shown up uninvited to their vacation, Bailey said.
He said the squabbling sisters drove away while he was in the bathroom — and he never saw Anastasia again.
Witnesses on Tuesday also recounted seeing the women fighting in their car after that — including one who heard Alexandria screaming “I need a psychiatrist!” just hours before the plunge.
“The girl that was on the passenger side … she was yelling and yelling and yelling. And that’s when the girl who was driving the car said, ‘call the psychiatrist, I need a psychiatrist,’” said Cecelia Kupau.
Other witnesses testified Monday that they saw the two in a hair-pulling fistfight right before the SUV careened off the cliff.
“Hair-pulling and punching is what I saw … The SUV sped up and then it jerked to the left,” said 17-year-old Joseph Toleafoa, who was in a van behind the Duvals’ car, according to Maui News.
Alexandria has already dodged a murder rap for her sister’s death, when a judge found no probable cause, but was arrested again after a grand jury indictment.
The siblings were born Alison and Ann Dadow in upstate New York, but moved several times around the country opening — and closing — yoga studios, racking up arrests for DUIs and, ultimately, changing their names.
At the time of the crash, they were living in Maui with their boyfriends.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/01/30/woman-accused-of-killing-twin-pretended-to-be-her-boyfriend/