North Carolina Injury Attorney Blog

After traveling all over the world and serving his country in three wars, David Stroupe, 86 of Leicester, died Friday while still being treated for injuries he received after being struck by an Asheville Transit Authority bus. The bus collided with Stroupe in the Westgate parking lot outside of Earth Fare.

An eyewitness, Karess Walker, of Asheville told authorities that Stroupe "was just coming out of the corner and he just stopped in the middle of the road." From her view, Walker felt that Stroupe "must have assumed the bus was going to stop. But it kept on going, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, please don't hit the man.' I thought he was going to stop right before it got to the man. But he just ran him right over."

Stroupe suffered a head injury and a foot injury in the incident. When the bus finally stopped, it landed on Stroupe's foot. EMS transported Stroupe to Memorial Mission for emergency treatment.

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As safety advocates and parents continue to preach the dangers of texting while driving, teenagers continue to test the texting laws to the detriment and harm of everyone else. Last week, Justin Wallace, a 19 year old Connecticutt man, showed up in Superior Court to be formally charged with a host of minor crimes arising out of his texting while driving hit & run fiasco with a pedestrian.

In the early evening of July 24, Lori Walsh was walking single file with her dog and two children down Tanner Marsh Road. At the same time, Wallace was driving his father's 1997 tan Toyota Camry in the same direction as the mother and children were walking. Wallace was sending and receiving text messages on his cell phone as he drove down the road. He knew it was against the law but didn't think he would get caught.

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When a consumer purchases a bicycle, or any product for that matter, they have the right to expect that the product will be safe for its intended use. After all, a corporate retailer is never allowed to needlessly endanger its customer or the general public. But that is exactly what big box giant Target has been doing for years. There are an estimated 67 million bicycles being ridden in America, and more than 59% of those are ridden by children.

On April 15th, 2006, a North Carolina couple decided to purchase a bicycle for their 14 year old daughter. They researched the various types of bicycles available and selected, what was in their opinion, the best bike for their daughter. They purchased the bicycle at Target because Target offered free assembly, represented that the bike was ready to ride, and their price was cheaper than buying the bike at a local bicycle specialty store.

Two weeks later, after the bicycle had been ridden just a few times by the daughter, the mother hopped on the bike to ride 3 blocks down the street to a neighbor's house. As she pedalled along, she shifted the bike's gears and suddenly the handle-bar violently jerked to the right, throwing her into the street on her head. The investigation found that the cause of the bicycle wreck was that the gear shift cable was incorrectly routed around the water bottle cage.

The brain injury was devastating. Severe amnesia, over a week in the intensive care unit, and months of brain injury rehabilitation therapy. The medical bills were enormous. She was unable to return to her profession as an auditor, and the extent of her injury left her with severe cognitive and emotional impairments. There are more than 150,000 non-fatal brain injuries from bicycle accidents each year in the US.

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Last Sunday in Arden, 25 year old Manuel Martinez drove his car through a row of mailboxes and then struck a 9 year old little boy. Martinez continued driving after hitting the child, but he and his passenger were arrested a short time later after eyewitnesses identified the pair at a local gas station.

Police officers determined that Martinez' blood alcohol content was .21 at the time of the crash - that is almost 3 times the legal limit. As a result of his conduct, officers charged him with DWI, felony hit and run, reckless driving, and having an open container of alcohol in his car. Our search of the State's criminal records does not show any prior criminal charges against Martinez.

Drunk driving is still a serious problem in North Carolina and in the US. On average, there are more than 300,000 people injured each year in the US in alcohol related crashes - that is an average of one person injured almost every 2 minutes (NHTSA, Alcohol, 1999). Many of those crashes involve pedestrians.

Crashes involving drunk drivers frequently cause serious injuries or death because the drunk driver is often speeding at the time of the wreck. "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that speeding alone was a contributing factor in almost 30% of all fatal crashes last year." (NHTSA, Speeding, 2009).

After the incident, EMS transported the child to the hospital where emergency room physicians diagnosed him with a severely fractured pelvis. Such injuries are usually not life threatening, but can cause problems that can last a lifetime, such as chronic pain and limited range of movement. Hopefully, the child will make a full and complete recovery.

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