Las Vegas trial centers on girl, 11, killed by garbage truck

It was fitting that the wrongful decease proceedings for Jazmin Espana started connected the archetypal time of school.

“And this time involves a concern wherever our small miss Jazmin Espana was walking location from school,” lawyer Sean Claggett told a assemblage Monday. “She would person been starting her inferior twelvemonth today.”

Jazmin was struck and killed by a Republic Services garbage motortruck successful southeast Las Vegas successful 2017. She was 11.

On Monday, attorneys presented their opening statements and witnesses testified successful the civilian proceedings earlier District Judge Jacqueline Bluth.

Republic Services lawyer David Barron insisted that the operator played by the publication the time of the collision. The crosswalk was clear, helium said.

“This lawsuit doesn’t telephone for blame,” Barron said. “But it does telephone for analyzing what happened.”

Claggett, who represents Jazmin’s mom, Encarnacion Espana, displayed a database of the driver’s citations wrong the company. He promised to show negligence and said his lawsuit should beryllium awarded $65 cardinal successful damages.

Tragedy astatine the crosswalk

After mediate schoolhouse fto retired astatine astir 2:40 p.m. connected Feb 8, 2017, Jazmin and her person Samantha Lopez stopped astatine a 7-Eleven to get a Slurpee. The 2 were walking to prime up relatives from the adjacent simple school.

Samantha pressed the crosswalk fastener astatine the intersection of South Sandhill and East Viking roads erstwhile the 2003 garbage motortruck pulled up adjacent to them, she testified. The driver, Julio Cortez-Solano, and Darryl Bryant, his rider and co-worker, smiled astatine the girls, who looked astatine each different and laughed.

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

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

Samantha testified that she did not spot the truck’s crook signals on. Video surveillance shows that the motortruck slowed down but did not travel to a implicit halt earlier turning right.

The motortruck deed Jazmin’s caput earlier it knocked her to the ground, pulled her nether and ran her over.

Negligence claims

At the trial, Claggett presented grooming materials that Republic Services uses to pass its drivers astir however unsafe its vehicles tin be.

The institution shows pictures of small kids, reminding drivers to look retired and presume that pedestrians don’t spot them. They instruct them to halt for 2 seconds.

“If you’re alert contiguous — she’s live tomorrow,” 1 poster read.

Instead, Claggett argued, Republic Services negligently kept a operator connected its unit with a past of disregarding information connected the road.

Cortez-Solano had a past of postulation violations with the institution dating backmost to 2008, erstwhile helium failed to obey a postulation signal. He was progressive successful a wreck successful some 2011 and 2013.

“These are each reddish flags that Republic Services had,” Claggett told jurors arsenic helium listed the driver’s past with the institution helium inactive works for. “You tin spot the foreshadowing of what’s going to hap to Jazmin.”

In December 2014, Cortez-Solano struck a parked conveyance with a dumpster, grounds shows.

In July 2015, an interior probe recovered that helium lied astir what happened erstwhile helium struck the powerfulness container to a gate.

And connected Sept 14, 2015, supervisors wrote him up for failing to travel directions and skipping aggregate work stops. The adjacent day, helium was written up again for nonaccomplishment to study harm to a customer’s gate. He was fired successful January 2016.

A period later, helium was rehired to bash residential services alternatively of commercial. Jazmin was killed little than a twelvemonth later.

“He had respective show problems,” Barron said successful his client’s defense. “Performance does not equate with safety.”

The proceedings is acceptable to resume Tuesday.

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