Lawsuit Over Deadly Turnpike Collision Settled for $62 Million

News9.com

NORMAN, Oklahoma -- The civil lawsuit over a collision that killed 10 people on an Oklahoma turnpike near Miami has been settled for $62.7 million.

Jury selection was scheduled to begin Thursday morning in Cleveland County when attorneys for eight of the families announced that a settlement had been reached Wednesday night.

A relative of the other two victims had reached an earlier settlement.

The crash occurred June 26, 2009, when 76-year-old Donald Creed, a driver for Associated Wholesale Grocers, drove his tractor-trailer into several cars that were stopped on the Will Rogers Turnpike for an earlier accident.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that Creed was fatigued from lack of sleep.

In August Creed pleaded guilty to 10 counts of negligent homicide and received a 10 year probated sentence and served a 30-day jail sentence.

Meanwhile, relatives of eight of the victims filed suit against the company Creed worked for, Associated Wholesale Grocers, for failure to properly train and supervise Creed.

Ricardo Reyes' mother and father were killed in the collision.

"To say it's been rough is really an understatement. Our lives are completely different. We were a really close family," Reyes said.

Reyes also said his family did not harbor any hatred toward Creed. "We understand that he didn't mean to wake up that day meaning to kill ten people. So you really can't hold any animosity or anger toward him."

The Reyes family believed the deaths could have been avoided if Associated Wholesale Grocers had merely followed its own safety regulations.

Both Associated Wholesale Grocers and Donald Creed were named as defendants in the civil lawsuit. It was filed in Norman because the company does much of its business there.