A year ago, 5 children were struck by appliance van in Pollock Pines. What’s happened since?
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The 18 students entered a crosswalk in Pollock Pines a year ago, on May 31, on a clear day in the 70s. They were small children — preschoolers from Pine Top Montessori school — on a “walking field trip,” a chance to enjoy the world outside the classroom in the quiet foothill town.
The marked crosswalk, in front of the 50 Grand restaurant at Pony Express Trail near Willow Street, was a few blocks away from the school. The county had plans in the works to move it to improve safety.
At about 10:40 a.m. a driver of a van allegedly looked down at his GPS, became distracted, looked up to realize he was barreling toward a group of kids and slammed on the brakes. Too late. According to police, he struck five, seriously injuring three.
Families earlier this year filed suits in El Dorado Superior Court alleging, among other contentions, that the county knew the walkway was unsafe and could have corrected it. And the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors addressed the issue months later at its Oct. 10 meeting.
“The people of Pollock Pines have been worried about this area, accented by the tragedy with the children getting hit in the crosswalk,” Supervisor Brooke Laine, who represents the area and South Lake Tahoe, said at the meeting. “And if we could’ve prevented that accident, we would’ve done everything in our power to do that. It was just awful timing.”
The crosswalks remains. But plans are finally in place to improve safety there.
Plans are now in place
A few weeks ago, county officials announced construction would begin this month on a new pedestrian and bike path along Pony Express Trail between Sanders Drive and Sly Park Road as part of the road improvement project.
It is anticipated to be completed in September.
The improvements include about 1.7 miles of bike lanes on both sides of Pony Express Trail, Americans with Disabilities Act improvements, crosswalks and signage with flashing beacons.
This follows the October meeting in which supervisors approved more than $4 million in safety improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists on Pony Express Trail through Pollock Pines.
But the effort was initiated five years before. The county has had a plan in the works since 2018 to add road improvements on Pony Express Trail, from Sly Park Road to Sanders Drive. Those road improvements include moving the crosswalk near Willow — where the children were hit by the van — farther east and adding a sign with flashing lights that can be activated by pedestrians before they enter the road.
When asked to respond to the allegations in the lawsuits, the El Dorado County Counsel’s Office referred The Sacramento Bee’s request for a comment to county spokeswoman Carla Hass.
“It’s our policy to not comment on any pending litigation,” she said.
Suits alleges county had time to make fixes
Families are suing El Dorado County, the appliance company that employed the driver and the two teachers who accompanied the preschool students that morning on a walking field trip to a nearby park.
Attorneys for the families allege the defendants are responsible for the injuries the small children suffered. Both civil cases are scheduled for hearings this summer; a trial has not been scheduled in either case.
The lawsuits filed make similar arguments. The attorneys seek damages for financial losses, past and future medical costs, income capacity loss and physical and mental suffering, along with physical impairment, anxiety and emotional distress.
The first lawsuit was filed Jan. 25 on behalf of two children, Axel Van Skike and Ja’Corey Dunlap, who were both 5 when the van struck them. Both boys were released from the hospital last June to continue their recovery, physically and emotionally, according to GoFundMe online fundraisers created to financially help their families.
Axel underwent surgery and had six screws and a plate placed in his femur, according to the fundraiser. Ja’Cory also suffered a broken femur and underwent surgery to insert several pins in his leg, according to the GoFundMe page.
Joseph Babich, a Sacramento-based lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Axel and Ja’Corey, argued the condition on the Pollock Pines crosswalk created a substantial risk of injury and had become dangerous before last year’s crash due to an increased amount of pedestrian and vehicle traffic.
In the lawsuit, Babich said the area was unsafe because the crosswalk and pedestrians using it “were not visible to westbound (vehicle) traffic due to a curvature of the roadway surface.” Babich also argued that the county had “a reasonable amount of time to obtain funds and carry out the necessary corrective work.”
School is a defendant, too
Also listed as defendants in the lawsuits are Pine Top Montessori school and the teachers who accompanied the preschool students that morning on a walking field trip, Jill Kime and Carrie Molaug.
Babich argued in the lawsuit that Kime and Molaug “negligently led the group (of children) across the crosswalk when it was unsafe to cross in light of traffic and roadway conditions.”
The second lawsuit argues that Kime and Molaug’s failure “to supervise, instruct, lead, accompany, monitor and/or chaperone the group of preschool children” directly and imminently caused for the third victim, a 4-year-old girl named Juniper Ammons.
Friedrich Seitz, a Los Angeles-based attorney, is representing Pine Top Montessori, along with Kime and Molaug. He did not respond to The Bee’s request for comment. Calls The Bee made to Pine Top Montessori were not returned.
When asked to respond to the allegations in the lawsuits, Kime said in an email that she could not speak about the May 31 incident under advisement of her attorney.
“My apologies, as you can imagine it’s been a very sad situation for all involved including our community,” Kime said in declining to answer questions.
The result: ‘Her new life with a walker’
That second lawsuit was filed Feb. 27 on behalf of Juniper. She was the last of the seriously injured children to be released from the hospital; she was able to return home in mid-August.
Alison Warren, Juniper’s aunt, has told The Bee that her niece suffered a traumatic brain injury in the crash. In an April 3 online update about her niece’s recovery, Warren wrote that Juniper tried new therapies in Texas but “started to regress emotionally” and has since returned home with her parents to continue her recovery and work to adjust to “her new life with a walker.”
“We all know this is a long process,” Warren wrote in the most recent online update. “Above all, we just want Juniper to know she is loved.”
John O’Brien, an Elk Grove-based attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Juniper, said in the lawsuit that the little girl suffered “severe emotional distress due to the catastrophic and permanent nature of her injuries.”
Jacob Glen Rose, 21, drove the appliance van and is listed as a defendant in the lawsuits along with his employer, Stabler Appliance Inc., which also does business as Edwards A-1 Appliance with locations in Placerville and Woodland.
O’Brien argued in the lawsuit that the appliance business and the employee driver are responsible for the “direct and proximate result of the negligence and carelessness” that caused serious injuries to the little girl.
Babich, the attorney representing Axel and Ja’Corey, argued in their suit that Rose “negligently” took his eyes off the road ahead of him and failed to stop for the children in the crosswalk.
When asked to respond to the allegations in the lawsuits, Katie Stabler, co-owner of the appliance business said “No comment,” and she referred The Bee’s questions to Christopher Beeman, a Bay Area-based attorney representing Rose and the appliance business. Beeman did not respond.
Driver not charged
El Dorado County prosecutors in January announced they would not be filing criminal charges against the appliance van’s driver. Prosecutors have said the facts of the investigation would not satisfy the legal requirements needed to file a charge of reckless driving causing injury.
Rose was working for the appliance business’ Placerville location and driving a company vehicle, a Ford E-150 cargo van, to a job location in Pollock Pines.
An investigation by the D.A.’s Office, which included information gathered by the California Highway Patrol and a reconstruction of the traffic collision conducted by an outside crash expert, determined the driver was traveling 2 mph above the speed limit of 35 mph when he looked down at a GPS device moments before spotting the children and hitting the brakes.
The driver stopped the van soon after the vehicle hit the children. Prosecutors said the driver was distracted and unaware that there was a large group of pedestrians in a crosswalk directly in front of his vehicle.
“However inexplicable and negligent the conduct is, there are insufficient facts to show that he was subjectively aware that his driving presented a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm to others, and that he then willfully and intentionally ignored that risk,” prosecutors said in a news release in January.
The aftermath
Days after the crash that injured the children, Molaug was among the children’s families and residents who gathered at Pinewood Elementary School. The Pollock Pines community was invited to that meeting to discuss the investigation into the crash and what needed to be done to make sure the road was safe for pedestrians, especially children.
The memory of what happened to the small children, at the time, was still vivid and emotionally overwhelming for their teacher.
“The kids that we see every day, they’re like our family. And to see something like this happen to not just one child but multiple children, and all the other children have to see it, has been heartbreaking,” Molaug told The Bee after last year’s meeting. “It’s just been probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through in my whole life. And as long as all of them make it out of the hospital, it’s gonna be a lot better. But it’s not gonna be OK.”
The civil case in the lawsuit for Axel and Ja’Corey is scheduled for a case management conference hearing June 4 in Placerville. Lawyers in Juniper’s lawsuit are scheduled for a similar case update Aug. 27.
