JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – A Missouri State Representative says MoDOT’s director lied during testimony about a fatal work zone crash. Rep. Jim Murphy (R-District 94) is now asking the director, Patrick McKenna, to resign.

“He lied to us,” Murphy said. “It wasn’t a small lie. It was an out-and-out blatant lie.”

Murphy had asked about MoDOT’s legal response to the November 2021 work zone crash on Telegraph over Interstate 255. There was no protective truck in place when a crash caused brain injuries to former MoDOT employee Michael Brown, and killed James Brooks and a pregnant Kaitlyn Anderson.

MoDOT has repeatedly attempted to get Anderson’s family lawsuit thrown out by arguing this should be a workers’ compensation case, in which no one is alive to be paid. In one filing, a MoDOT lawyer wrote, “Jaxx Jarvis is Anderson’s unborn child or dependent. Thus, he is an employee by definition.”

Representative Murphy thinks that argument makes Missouri look bad. He challenged MoDOT’s director in the committee hearing, saying, “The one instance, though, where you had a worker who was pregnant and then we declared the baby was an employee.”

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“That’s false,” McKenna interrupted.

“We did not declare that?” Murphy said.

“No, we did not,” the director replied.

Murphy said McKenna lied.

“He emphatically denied it was the fact,” he said. “As it turns out, he lied to us.”

Murphy said it happened several times at the hearing, to other representatives like Dean Van Schoiack.

“I’ve read the court documents,” Van Schoiack said.

But McKenna held his ground at the hearing.

“We have not made that case. We’re defending ourselves in court,” he said.

Murphy told the director at the hearing that his remarks came across “a little cold.”

“Frankly, when you lie to a committee, I think there should be consequences and, frankly, I think the gentleman should resign immediately,” Murphy said on Monday.

The hearing in question happened the same day MoDOT argued to Missouri’s Supreme Court that Anderson’s family lawsuit be tossed.

“I miss my daughter every day,” Tonya Musskopf, Kaitlyn’s mother, said.

Representative Murphy thinks we can protect Missouri taxpayers and still be decent to victims. He pointed to the new Kaitlyn Anderson memorial sign as an example.

“MoDOT just put the sign up; never informed anybody that it was going to be put up,” he said. “We didn’t have any type of ceremony for her. This is not the way it always used to be.”

On Monday, our FOX 2 News crew spotted a MoDOT work crew very close to the 2021 fatal work zone crash. This time, however, we saw a buffer truck that the crew did not have three years ago.

Late Monday, MoDOT sent a two-page letter defending director McKenna, saying he did tell the truth. A MoDOT lawyer wrote, “MoDOT was aware there was confusion over the issue of (the term) ‘employee’ and clarified …MoDOT was not claiming the unborn child was an employee of MoDOT… (but rather) a dependent of Kaitlyn Anderson.”

Confused? Even a Missouri Supreme Court judge had questions for the MoDOT lawyer during this month’s arguments over this very issue. The Supreme Court’s answer could come at any time.

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