‘I’m sorry,’ garbage truck driver tells jury in wrongful death case

While describing the collision to jurors, Julio Cortez-Solano became emotional. He needed to instrumentality a five-minute break.

“I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ 1,000 times,” helium said. “I’m sorry.”

Cortez-Solano was the operator whose Republic Services garbage motortruck struck and killed 11-year-old Jazmin Espana successful 2017.

On Thursday and Friday, helium testified done a Spanish interpreter successful her wrongful decease trial, which began Monday earlier District Judge Jacqueline Bluth.

“My beingness has ne'er been the same, and it ne'er volition be,” Cortez-Solano said.

During the trial, attorneys person presented Republic Services grooming materials that pass drivers astir however unsafe the vehicles are and to look retired for kids.

Instead, lawyer Sean Claggett said, the institution negligently kept a operator connected its unit with a past of disregarding information connected the road.

Cortez-Solano had been written up aggregate times successful the years starring up to Jazmin’s death. He was fired and rehired.

“Things hap sometimes, and it’s a quality factor,” Cortez-Solano said Friday. He present works for the institution arsenic a mechanic.

Claggett, who represents Jazmin’s mother, Encarnacion Espana, said his lawsuit should beryllium awarded $65 cardinal successful damages.

Tragedy connected the crosswalk

After schoolhouse connected Feb. 8, 2017, Jazmin walked with her person Samantha Lopez to the intersection of South Sandhill and East Viking roads.

Cortez-Solano and his rider and spotter, Darryl Bryant, pulled up adjacent to them and smiled.

Video surveillance shows that Cortez-Solano slowed down but ne'er afloat stopped.

The postulation airy turned green, and the locomotion awesome indicated that the girls could transverse the street. Samantha turned astir to look astatine the postulation down her, and Jazmin started to transverse without her.

“At archetypal she said, ‘Are you going to travel with me?’ And I wasn’t,” Samantha told jurors earlier this week. “After, I conscionable heard her gasp.”

The motortruck had turned right, hitting Jazmin and knocking her to the ground.

Cortez-Solano testified that helium saw the girls connected the sidewalk and looked some ways earlier turning. He noticed helium deed Jazmin aft helium turned right.

“You guessed that they weren’t going to move. And you guessed wrong,” Claggett told him. “Because the miss walked due to the fact that she had a locomotion signal.”

“I was truthful definite they were lasting there,” Cortez-Solano answered.

Neither Bryant nor Cortez-Solano were disciplined for their actions that day, they testified. But Jazmin’s decease deed adjacent to location for Bryant, whose girl shares the aforesaid name.

“An 11-year-old miss didn’t person a accidental to acquisition beingness arsenic she would,” Bryant testified Thursday. “That would fuss anybody who has a heart.”

Despite his emotions, Bryant stood by the actions taken that day.

“We made the close crook safely,” helium said. “Jazmin walked down the motortruck aft we made the close turn. That was her fault, not ours.”

‘Jazzy Jazmin’

Jazmin’s teacher, Karen Chester, told jurors that Jazmin, whose archetypal connection was Spanish, tried her champion to larn English astatine school.

“I called her ‘Jazzy Jazmin,’ and she would conscionable giggle,” the teacher testified.

After her death, Chester went to her funeral. She recalled seeing the miss successful an unfastened coffin, a veil covering her breached face.

Friends and household told jurors that Jazmin was a shy miss who loved to sing. She was a “little mom” who took attraction of her young niece. Every nighttime earlier bed, she work a publication to her mom.

“She was my mom’s baby,” said Julisa Espana, Jazmin’s older sister. “We person ne'er felt our location truthful lonely.”

Their mother, Encarnacion Espana, is primitively from Puebla, Mexico. On the nighttime of her daughter’s death, the household arrived astatine the country and saw a enactment of quality reporters.

A fewer hours aboriginal they learned she had died.

Now, the parent blocks the satellite out. A household friend, Erika Benitez, said the parent keeps her country dark, with conscionable 1 lit candle.

Benitez testified, “She ever says it herself: ‘I mislaid a portion of myself.’”

The proceedings volition resume Monday and is expected to reason adjacent week.

Contact Briana Erickson astatine berickson@reviewjournal.com oregon 702-387-5244. Follow @ByBrianaE connected Twitter.