APRIL 30, 2015
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
The mother of one of five nursing students killed in a Georgia highway crash
last week has sued the trucking company that employed the driver suspected of
causing the fiery collision.
A wrongful death lawsuit filed in Bryan County State Court
seeks monetary damages against Total Transportation of Mississippi and
its parent company, Tennessee-based U.S. Xpress Enterprises, for the death of
21-year-old Abbie Deloach of Savannah. The civil suit was filed Wednesday on
behalf of her mother, Kim Deloach McQuaig.
"She's a compassionate, forgiving person,"
McQuaig's attorney, Mark Tate, said Thursday. "This is not about revenge.
This not about an eye for an eye. This is about the appropriate way to resolve
problems between parties."
Deloach and four fellow nursing students from Georgia
Southern University in Statesboro were traveling to Savannah, where they were
wrapping up clinical training for the school year, when they died April 22 in a
chain-reaction crash on Interstate 16.
The Georgia State Patrol has said a tractor-trailer failed
to slow down for stop-and-go traffic backed up by an unrelated wreck. The big
truck smashed into two vehicles in which the nursing students were carpooling,
causing one of the cars to burst into flames. Seven total vehicles were damaged
in the crash.
The tractor-trailer was registered to Total Transportation.
The driver has not been charged, and he was not named as a defendant in
McQuaig's civil lawsuit.
"If we thought there were criminal actions — that he
was under the influence or texting or driving for an excessive number of hours
— we would have named him" in the lawsuit, Tate said. "It's not
really for me to get completely into, but I know that he is absolutely, deeply
remorseful."
Total Transportation CEO John Stomps did not immediately
return a phone call Thursday. Stomps said last week that the company was
cooperating with investigators, but he declined to comment further on the
crash.
The State Patrol has said it could take several months to
finish its investigation of the crash and decide whether to bring criminal
charges against the tractor-trailer driver. The agency's initial incident
report was still not available Thursday, eight days after the collision.
In addition to Deloach, the crash also killed Emily E.
Clark, 20, of Powder Springs; Morgan J. Bass, 20, of Leesburg; Catherine M.
Pittman, 21, of Alpharetta; and Caitlyn N. Baggett, 21, of Millen. Georgia
Southern officials said all were nursing students in their junior year.