2nd lawsuit filed over fatal slide into pond
A second lawsuit has been filed in the case of a Little Rock woman and her son who were stranded in a submerged vehicle for an extended period of time after a Little Rock 911 dispatcher failed to send police or a water rescue crew.
Jinglei Yi’s vehicle slid into a Little Rock pond in 2013 after she hit a patch of black ice. A lawsuit previously was filed on behalf of Yi’s 5- year- old son, Le Yang, who died in January — two years after the wreck — from drowning- related injuries, his family said.
The ongoing lawsuit on his behalf against Little Rock and several city employees was filed in 2013 after the accident and was changed to a wrong-
ful- death suit after he died this year.
A second wrongful- death lawsuit was filed Tuesday morning in Pulaski County Circuit Court, this time on behalf of Yi. The complaint claims that the city is at fault for a delayed 911 response.
A news release from one of the attorneys handling the case, Carter Stein of McMath Woods P. A., said one cause of Yi’s death “was the chronic understaffing and underfunding of the City of Little Rock’s Communications Center which handles 911 calls.”
A city spokesman said Tuesday that the city had not yet been served with the 75- page lawsuit, and a response would be “premature and inappropriate at this time.”
The 911 dispatcher who took Yi’s call after the Jan. 14, 2013, accident sent a Metropolitan Emergency Medical Service ambulance to the scene immediately, but not police officers or Fire Department water rescue crews.
About 53 minutes passed from the time of the call until Yi was pulled from her submerged vehicle, according to the news release from the attorneys representing her estate. The city has previously said that about 31 minutes passed from the time Yi made the first 911 call until the time the first fire crew got to the scene.
Yi died later in the morning after the accident. Her son lost consciousness and cognitive function after the accident, according to the lawsuit against the city filed on his behalf.
The attorneys for Yi’s estate said they have a 2005 city memorandum that mentions how “adequate staffing remains a critical concern” for the Communications Center.
“In the over two and half years since the death of Jinglei, a wife, a mother and a nurse, the City of Little Rock has done nothing to address the Communications Center staffing issues that contributed to her death,” Stein said in the release.
The city employed 30 call takers and 25 dispatchers at the time of Yi’s death. There are now 19 call takers and 23 dispatchers, a city spokesman said.
The lawsuit on behalf of Yi claims that underfunding of the Communications Center created inadequate pay for call takers, resulting in high turnover and “an inability to retain competent, trained employees.”
Candace Middleton, the dispatcher who responded to Yi’s call, had previously been fired from the same position in Benton for a series of errors. She resigned from Little Rock six months after Yi’s death during an investigation into how she handled the call.
The new lawsuit names the following as defendants: the city, Middleton, former Police Chief Stuart Thomas, Fire Chief Gregory Summers, Assistant Police Chief Wayne Bewley, Fire Captain Robert Sharp, Communications Center Manager Laura Martin, Communications Administrator Linda Wilson, Communications Shift Supervisors Sharon Martin and Alan Cate, Emergency Communications Trainer Marquita Dooley, Communications Systems Specialist Karen Grimm and MEMS.
The lawsuit asks for a jury trial, reimbursement of attorneys’ fees, and both punitive and monetary damages.