Stacy files suit against E911 board
Former University of Alabama football player Siran Stacy filed suit against the Dothan/Houston County E911 Board on Thursday in relation to a 2007 car wreck that left his wife and four of his children dead.
The lawsuit, filed in Houston County Circuit Court, accuses the E911 board and the estate of Adam Wayman, the driver who crashed his truck into Stacy’s van on Nov. 17, 2007, of wrongful death and negligence.
According to the lawsuit, motorists traveling along Highway 84 that night made multiple 911 calls to report Wayman’s erratic driving, but their calls were transferred to Dale County E911, “preventing any proper and adequate dispatch time in which authorities could have intercepted Wayman’s vehicle.”
The suit says Wayman began driving his truck westbound in the highway’s eastbound lane at least 7 miles away from Stacy’s van, which was traveling on Highway 123.
The E911 board is accused of neglecting its duty to “exercise reasonable care in the receiving, routing, transferring and/or responding to emergency calls,” while the suit says Wayman had a duty to “operate his motor vehicle in a safe manner.”
Stacy’s lawsuit calls for a jury trial to determine the damages. It is filed on behalf of him and his family.
The Alabama Wrongful Death Statute only allows the recovery of punitive damages in wrongful death lawsuits, meaning no payment for medical bills or other reimbursements can be gathered.
However, the negligence count allows Stacy to seek compensatory damages as well.
After the crash, Stacy’s wife, Ellen, and children, Lequisa, Bronson, Sydney and Ellie, were pronounced dead on the scene. Wayman died at Flowers Hospital the next morning.
Advertisement
Reader Reactions
No one posting here knows the actual response time of this event . The system did work ! If response personal had taken 8 minutes to respond then the outcome would have been the same. Theres no way they could respond in the 7 minute time frame.IT’s all about money.Money that he will never get from e911. I seriously doubt he will get any money from the drunks estate either.I dont believe the 911 system has ever been efficient but in this case it wouldnt have mattered anyway. The time frame was much to narrow.I cant understand peoples logic in support of his claim.
Don’t look at it as someone trying to get a dime to ride through life..Look at it as someone trying to make the system work. So that the next time something like this happens, maybe the system will work, and this won’t happen to one of our families.
Put yourself in his shoes, Dark night and your family is on your way home…a drunk driver hits you, and the 911 person is trying to figure out who to send to respond to the umpteen calls they are getting, because of where you are on a map.
There has got to be a way to make the system better and win or lose, Mr. Stacey is doing that.
i do not know mr. stacey personally but come on. give the man a break. i do not feel this is about money. this is about wrongful death and trying to keep it from happening to someone else. he has lost almost his whole reason for living at one lick. that is something i can’t even imagine ever having to go through. yes it was the drunk drivers fault that he was driving down the wrong side of the road. i know police can’t be everywhere at all times but i also know they make mistakes just like anybody else. i won’t go into any detail cause it’s a long story but there was a time when if my family had waited on the ambulance to come get me to the er i would be dead today. i found out after everything was over that the ambulance didn’t show up til 30 minutes after my family had taken me themselves. they waited and waited and the ambulance still hadn’t showed up and i collapsed so they rushed me there themselves. Thank God they did. 911 had to be called more than 1 time before they ever finally showed up. sometimes you just gotta do what ya gotta do. i know sueing the e911 won’t bring his family back but it will at least give him some comfort knowing he got justice for his family for what happened and then maybe he can get on with his life. i would hate to be in his shoes right now with what he’s having to deal with. let the jury decide if they are at fault when they hear all the evidence. my prayers and thoughts are with you mr. stacy and your family.
Anybody that expects the police to prevent a crime against them is going to be disappointed.
The e911’s decision was the best logical choice. If this article is correct the drunk traveled 7 miles on 84 before the collision. That would give the police approxmately 7 minutes to overtake and intercept him before the collision. These’s absolutely no way they could have came from newton or dothan and did that in 7 minutes. The best that could be hoped for was that dale co had a depudy sheriff in that immediately area and could respond faster than 7 minutes.Even the odds of that was very slim. Assuming the drunk was driving 60 mph then a dothan officer at flowers hospital would need to travel in excess 150 mph to overtake , circle and stop the drunk or enter and travel the wrong lane to stop him. One from newton would need to average in excess of 120 mph. Even then either officer would have to enter the wrong lane of traffic as the drunk and would have endangered more lifes. There was no good solution to this event. Anyone thinking that e911 could have prevented it cant have much analytical ability. Certain laws of physics still apply in dale county you know. My calculations are estimates and i’m sure the speeds i indicated are alot lower than would have actually been required.If anyones wishes to question them i can pull out a pencil and paper.
I am loving the lack of logic in this debate.
BMOC said it’s not the cops job to prevent anything, just clean up messes.
and James is saying it’s a con from a man who couldn’t hack it as a baller.
well, cities like to hire large numbers of police because they are a “DETERRENT”, or they prevent crimes. Security Guards are hired to look out for and prevent incidents at events.
Secret Service agents are trained to PREVENT crimes.
so by BMOC’s logic, cops are overpaid, overtrained Mop specialists.
well, why do we have Medics? Why do we have Firefighters when all we need are cleaning ladies and coroners?
Oh, your house is on fire? well, let it burn down and we’ll send Sanitation to clean it.
Your husband has chest pains? We don’t heal, sir. We just carry them to the morgue. It’s not our fault- he shouldn’t eat Pork Rinds and Root Beer all darn day.
You know that isn’t true, and you know that cops can and do prevent crime.
It is true that cops cannot be everywhere and prevent every crime; still, knowing that a cop is rolling up and down the block gives a criminal a lot to consider- and change his mind.
but with those rose colored glasses you are wearing, i can see that blaming just the dead is the same as “no harm, no foul” to the living.
Gotterdammerung to that, i say.
Sounds to me like a brother that couldnt make it in football and is looking for a free ride thru life on someone elses dime. I hate the accident happen and he lost family members. Fact remains it wasnt anyones fault but the drunk driver. Stacy is just looking to profit from an unfortunate tragedy. E911 owes him nothing. Sure hope i get called for jury duty. Its not 911’s duty to protect him. They offer a service but theres no guarantee of the quality of service.
Yeah, ok jman…
Whatever you say.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to have a jury that never read the newspaper or watched t.v.
That would just prove to me that the jurors were ignorant and uneducated.
But hey, that’s just me.
Simple minded?
Really?
Wow.
Got to respond to this simple minded statement…a few comments on a newspaper blog will have no bearing on the case…get real grl you must not keep up with the times..lawyers look for any reason to help their clients and I would not doubt that while striking a jury questions will arise about are you familiar with the case, read the newspaper, watched television. An old saying might apply here Think before you speak 
I highly doubt a few comments on a newspaper blog will have any bearing on anything in this case(or any case, for that matter).
Get real.
News editor Christie Kulavich guides you to fun events happening in the Wiregrass.
Sports writer Drew Champlin writes about the latest sports news from Troy University.
Reporters Lance Griffin and Debbie Ingram write about latest news released on the country music development planned for Houston County.
Advertisement