Arizona Truck Accident: Semi-Truck Driver Charged for Death, Injuries

This video features Timothy Tonkin, a Personal Injury attorney based in Arizona.

Driver Error, Mechanical Defects Blamed for Crash

Video Transcript:

Rob Rosenthal:

This is an AskTheLawyers.com legal brief.

A commercial truck driver has been charged with manslaughter and aggravated assault in Arizona after slamming his semi-truck into several vehicles stopped at a traffic light, killing a Maricopa County Sheriff's detention officer and injuring four other people.

The crash happened the last week of November, southwest of Phoenix near Buckeye on State Route 85. According to court documents, the driver Jorge Campos from California said he saw the vehicles ahead of him but could not come to a stop. He also told troopers that he may have blacked out due to high blood sugar.

Campos told police he'd been having mechanical problems with his truck and was driving to California to get it repaired. An investigation revealed inconsistencies in Campos’s electronic log book, in that he had been driving while he was supposed to be sleeping, a common tactic used to avoid hours of service term limits.

Attorney Tim Tonkin, managing lawyer with the Phillips Law Group based in Phoenix, had this to say about this tragic situation.

He said, “Preventable truck wrecks causing serious injury or death are a scourge on the trucking industry and our entire country. Bad drivers, bad trucking companies, and bad truck mechanics need to be punished so they do not endanger the public, our first responders, and malign the reputation of good truckers keeping the country going during our national crisis.”

He goes on to say,” I hope the family of this fallen officer calls a specialized lawyer who understands the regulations governing truckers and the companies that employ them to make sure they are held to full accountability under the law.”

Police say Campos’s driving privileges had already been suspended in Arizona because he failed to appear in relation to an earlier crash. To learn more about your legal rights after a truck accident, make sure to visit askthelawyers.com.

I'm Rob Rosenthal and this has been an AskTheLawyers™ legal brief.

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