Fond du Lac, WI — A man and woman in Fond du Lac, Sudhaker Ingle & Neelima Ingle, were identified as the two people from Wednesday’s accident who were admitted to a hospital in critical condition. On Wednesday of this week, April 15, the Ingle’s vehicle was rear-ended by a commercial semi-truck and pushed into several other vehicles on I-41.
The accident also injured three others: Christopher Rouse, 47, Sandra Thomson, 66, and the commercial semi-truck driver Adam Burlock, 24 years old.
The accident happened at about 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, just north of Highway 00 and Johnson Road. Police said that the Ingles were in a blue car that was headed north when they had to slow down for some construction ahead of them. Adam Burlock was behind them in his semi-truck, but didn’t notice them braking until it was too late.
His semi-truck crashed into the back of the Ingle’s blue car, doing major damage and leaving both Sudhaker and Neelima with critical injuries. They were both take via helicopter to separate hospitals to be treated.
The initial accident pushed the Ingles car into some other vehicles as well, leading to Christopher Rouse and Sandra Thompson’s injuries.
Adam Burlock was injured as well. Right now, police haven’t mention whether Burlock would be facing charges or not. As of Thursday, Sudahaker Ingle’s condition had improved from critical to fair.
It appears that Burlock was working for Speedy Metals, LLC — a company based out of New Berlin.
Map of the Accident
Commentary:
It’s really unfortunate, but I see these kinds of accidents all the time. I have to say that most of the time, I can be pretty analytical and professional about looking at things from an objective point of view (which is my job as an attorney). But, when people are hurt this badly in an accident, it’s difficult not to get a little worked up.
What was this truck driver thinking? Was he simply not paying attention to the road in front of him? Was he fiddling with the radio or picking something off the floor? I’ve been handling accidents like this for a long time and there are lots of excuses I’ve heard.
A lot of people might look at something like this and think that “accidents happen” and there’s nothing that could’ve been done. Folks, perhaps that’s the case with some accidents out there, but I’ve found that’s rarely the case when you really take a closer look. There’s almost always something that the police or the news media didn’t see, and it usually could have prevented the accident.
Let me give an example. We handled a case out of West Texas where a semi-truck ran another driver off the road and then drove away. The car crashed into another vehicle and two people were killed and two more were badly injured. The truck driver was later questioned by police and told them he didn’t had been on the stretch of road, but didn’t cause an accident. Well, we were hired on the case and began our own investigation. Thanks to a witness who followed the semi-truck driver after the accident, we learned that this driver did know he had caused an accident and was trying to clean things up before anyone found out.
I’m not saying that the semi-truck driver in this Fond du Lac accident had ill intentions or is trying to lie — on the contrary, I’m sure he feels terrible about what happened. But like I said earlier, what will we find if we really take a closer look at this? Will we find the truck driver had dozed off behind the wheel? Was he using his phone and distracted?
The fact of the matter is that this young man should be a professionally-trained driver and both he and his company need to be held accountable for their mistakes, since it very nearly cost two people their lives.
— Grossman Law Offices
