16 St. Ignatius Hockey team members injured, truck drive faces DUI charges
Truck crash injures St. Ignatius Hockey team; Truck driver taken into custody with DUI Charges pending; Driver’s record and knowledge of company executives may become critical issue
At least 16 members of the St. Ignatius Prep High School junior varsity hockey team were injured last night (Saturday, 11/12/2022) when a semi-truck driver slammed into their school bus after the team played in Culver, Indiana, near South Bend.
The media is reporting that the truck driver from New York is being held in police custody pending chemical testing of his blood.
DUI-related felony charges reportedly are pending.
“Tragically, companies today face a shortage of competent and responsible truck drivers,” said Robert A. Clifford, founder and senior partner of Clifford Law Offices that has handled similar trucking cases across the country.
“Through forensic evidence and extensive discovery before trial, we have found that too often company executives are aware that their drivers had previous substance abuse issues but look the other way. It remains to be seen if that is an issue in this tragic crash.”
Clifford Law Offices obtained a $18.15 million trucking verdict last year in a truck crash in a southern suburb near the Indiana border and previously settled a case in 2020 regarding a truck driver who had known alcohol and drug abuse issues, yet the company allowed the driver to continue to work. That case settled for a confidential amount.
The truck struck the school bus that had 26 people on board, mostly 15 year olds, as it was making a northbound turn onto Center Street along U.S. Route 30 in Warsaw, Indiana.
St. Ignatius is a private college prep school run by Jesuit Catholics; several lawyers at Clifford Law Offices attended that school years ago.
Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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