Gavin Hinkley and his fiancée were running errands in September for their wedding, which was weeks away, when a Riverside County sheriff’s patrol vehicle barreled toward them at 100 mph, running through a red light and colliding with the driver’s side of their car.
Hinkley, 21, died at the crash site, and his fiancée, 20-year-old Madeline Fox, suffered “catastrophic” injuries, including permanent brain trauma, according to a lawsuit filed this week by their families against Riverside County.
The suit alleges that the “grossly negligent” and reckless conduct of deputy Glynn Wilburn, who was driving the patrol car, caused Hinkley’s death and Fox’s serious physical and mental impairment, grief and emotional distress.
Hinkley had been driving the couple’s Tesla and was making a left turn at the intersection of Cherry Valley Boulevard and Roberts Street in the city of Calimesa.
Wilburn, a defendant in the lawsuit, began to brake just before the impact, but was still driving at 98 mph in the seconds before the car slowed to about 72 mph, the suit says.
Riverside County, Southern California Edison, American Medical Response of Southern California and the cities of Calimesa and Beaumont are also named as defendants in the suit filed Thursday in Riverside County Superior Court.
Spencer Lucas, an attorney representing the families with the firm Panish Shea Ravipudi LLP, said the deputy was responding to a dispatch, but regardless, law enforcement must operate with a reasonable level of safety and care.
“There’s no excuse for a cowboy cop to be barreling down a two-lane road through a red light. … He was driving so far in excess of what would be reasonable,” Lucas said in an interview with The Times. “This tragic crash was completely preventable.”
The suit says Southern California Edison erred because its utility equipment blocked visibility, preventing Hinkley from seeing the fast-approaching law enforcement vehicle.
It also alleges that paramedics who responded to the crash with the private ambulance company American Medical Response treated the deputy and transported him before attending to Fox’s and Hinkley’s more serious injuries.
“The deputy, who only had minor injuries, was taken away by the ambulance while [Hinkley and Fox] were left inside of the wreckage,” Lucas said.
Fox, as a result of her brain injury, “has had to start all over again” and learn to swallow, eat on her own, stand up and walk and talk, Lucas said. Her mother has been appointed as her guardian.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment. Lt. Deirdre Vickers said the department does not comment on pending litigation.
Allegations of reckless conduct in the suit largely hinge on a recently released California Highway Patrol report on the crash, which analyzed the crash site and vehicles in detail.
The report said Wilburn had the “siren and forward-facing red and blue emergency lights of the Ford activated,” and that five seconds before the crash, he was driving in the “westbound lane of Cherry Valley Boulevard at 100 miles per hour, with no force applied to the accelerator or brake pedals.”
It also said Wilburn “likely recognized the Tesla as a hazard” about a second before the crash, at which point he swerved his steering wheel to the right and applied the brakes.
Photos of the Tesla included in the report show the left doors of the car completely destroyed.
According to data maintained by the California Highway Patrol, collisions in L.A. County in which a law enforcement vehicle was found to be at fault have risen in recent years. A Times analysis published in October found that the city of L.A. had spent at least $90 million in negotiated payouts or verdicts in more than 1,200 lawsuits related to bad police driving over the last decade.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
