The City of Newport Beach’s trash hauler and one of its drivers are being sued by the parents of an eight-year-old boy who was fatally struck by a garbage truck while riding his bicycle in May 2016.
Brock McCann was a third grader riding home after class was dismissed at Newport Beach Heights Elementary School when he was struck by a CR&R Inc. trash truck that had made a turn onto 15th Street at the Michael Place intersection. The boy later died of massive injuries.
The wrongful death lawsuit filed by Patrick and Bernardette McCann and their lawyer Darren Aitken of Santa Ana-based Aitken Aitken Cohn seeks an unspecified amount in general damages, special damages, personal property damages, court costs and whatever else a court deems proper.
You can read the complaint here:
[pdf-1]CR&R is faulted for having trucks operating in an intersection within six blocks of three schools that were letting out—Newport Heights Elementary School, Ensign Intermediate School and Newport Harbor High School—and doing so after specifically being directed by the city to adjust trash pickup hours to avoid the “clash of children and trucks,” according to court documents.
The driver, Roberto Zermeno Pedroza, is called out for having looked only to the left, and not to the right, as he drove through the crosswalk without stopping, “thereby causing Brock McCann’s fatal injuries,” reads the complaint.
Lawyers for CR&R Inc. could not be reached for comment.
Aitken Aitken Cohn claims Brock McCann was an experienced bicycle rider and that his parents taught him bike safety. Since the death of their son, the McCanns have advocated for “concrete steps to protect the safety of children going to and from school, both as individuals” and with the Safe Routes To Schools group, their lawyers say.
“In the words of the McCanns, ‘Without taking a look at the whole traffic situation and making monumental changes, this will happen again. It is just a matter of time,'” states an Aitken Aitken Cohn press release on the suit. “‘The purpose of this lawsuit is to prevent something like this from happening again.’”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.