UPDATE: Rachel Simmons Killed by Alleged DWI Driver on Northwest Highway in Dallas, TX
UPDATE (July 16, 2021): The victim in this accident has been identified as 38-year-old Rachel Ann Simmons.
UPDATE (July 2, 2021): Reports have identified the driver involved in this crash as 61-year-old Kevin Doyle Harris. Harris was charged with Intoxication Manslaughter in connection to the accident.
Dallas, TX -- June 4, 2021, a pedestrian was struck and killed by a suspected drunk driver on Northwest Highway in Dallas.
Authorities say the incident happened shortly after 9:00 p.m. on westbound Northwest Highway near Community Drive. Preliminary investigation suggests a driver lost control of his westbound Kia Sorento in the area and drove into the raised median where the pedestrian was sitting. After hitting the pedestrian the Kia also struck a box truck that was stopped at the nearby traffic light.
The pedestrian suffered fatal injuries in the crash.
The accident remains under investigation. No further information is available at this time.
Updated Commentary on Fatal Auto-Pedestrian Accident on Northwest Hwy in Dallas
The legal community is pretty small and, oftentimes, lawyers will learn inside information just from talking to other lawyers. I have heard through the grapevine that the police suspect that the defendant driver in this case was intoxicated when the accident happened. When I originally wrote the commentary for this article I speculated that this may be an alcohol-related case, but information we've received from a fellow attorney makes it quite clear that this probably is an alcohol-related case. So what does that mean?
It means that the victims of this accident probably have a very different adversary than they realize. To be sure, the alleged drunk driver is likely to blame, but I'd wager that there is also a bar that served the alleged drunk driver who is also at fault.
As most people who read my blog know, I'm very zealous about lawsuits against bars. The overwhelming majority of drunk driving fatalities in Texas occur because bars overserve people who then go out and kill someone. The way I see it, every single bar that we take behind the woodshed is a bar that will get its act together and cease overserving people. There's another complexity in this case, which I've heard through the rumor mill. It appears that one of the victims may have been homeless.
A unfortunate reality that I think the general public is unaware of is that homeless people are often the victims of drunk driving accidents. For instance, I had a case out of Galveston recently, where a man became incredibly intoxicated at a beach-front bar, before driving his car onto the sidewalk and running down two homeless men. The really sad part about all of this is that often people who are homeless have strained relations with their relatives. As such, if some tragedy befalls them, their family may not even know about it, nor is it likely that the family will speak for the homeless person in court. Of all the shocking and tragic things I see in my practice, the notion that someone can be killed by a drunk driver and no one is there in the homeless victim's corner strikes me as particularly dispiriting.
Hopefully, I'm wrong on this one and someone has informed the family and they're going to bat for the victim. I apologize if this is a bit more sentimental than most of my posts, but this incident rubbed me the wrong way.
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