Tipton County — There was an accident along Indiana 213 east of Tipton that involved a flatbed truck and a pickup truck, injuring a woman from Windfall and killed a woman from Sharpsville. Police later released the identity of the woman who died as Leydi Noemi Lopez Gomez.
Injured was Olga Monteil, 39 years old.
The accident itself happened on Wednesday, July 8, 2015 at the intersection of Indiana Highway 213 and Indiana Highway 28. Leydi Gomez was driving a pickup truck south on Indiana 213 that day with Monteil as her passenger when they were hit on the side by a flatbed truck that was headed west on Indiana 28.
Gomez was killed immediately in the wreck and her passenger, Monteil, was taken to two separate hospitals for treatment. The flatbed truck driver was identified later as Joshua Owens, 28, and he was only slightly injured. His passenger, 28-year old Derek Brown, was actually more seriously injured and had to be taken to an Indianapolis hospital for treatment.
The accident may have been caused by one of the vehicles running a stop sign. So far, one news source has claimed that Gomez’ truck was the one that ran its stop sign.
Map of the Accident
View from the Road
Commentary:
Looking at this from a purely academic standpoint, the person with the most viable claim here is going to be the injured passenger of the flatbed truck. Now I don’t want to start assuming that the news reports here are even remotely accurate (because they’re often not), but let’s pretend they are for the sake of argument.
Since the passenger in the flatbed truck here presumably didn’t do anything wrong and didn’t cause the accident at all, then it would be safe to assume that whatever claim he has isn’t hindered by his own liability. Being that flatbed trucks are often commercially-owned and operated, they usually have parts of the insurance policies that specifically cover situations like this — where a driver causes more damage and injuries than their policy can really cover. It happens a lot when people have liability-only insurance policies.
— Grossman Law Offices
