Madison County, TX — August 21, 2024, Jessica Ross Sheehan was killed as the result of a truck accident at around 3:20 p.m. on Interstate 70.
Preliminary information about the accident says it happened near Taylor Blair Road in the Jefferson Township area, west of Columbus.
According to officials, 33-year-old Jessica Ross Sheehan was traveling eastbound along I-70. From westbound lanes, it appears an oncoming box truck somehow veered onto the median, went through the cable barrier, and entered eastbound lanes. There, the truck crashed into Sheehan, killing Sheehan. It’s unclear if anyone else was injured.
Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman
Right now, the exact factors remain unconfirmed, but authorities mentioned drugs as a possible factor. If that’s true, that’s obviously a serious mistake that calls for consequences. But who exactly will be facing those consequences? It seems pretty clear a truck driver on drugs would be held accountable, but it’s important investigators consider the possibility someone could have foreseen and prevented this accident: an employer.
Any time a large truck is involved in a crash like this, it’s crucial that investigators consider if it was being used for work and whether or not an employer contributed to the accident. With drugs, for example, problems rarely come out of the blue. I’ve handled hundreds of commercial vehicle accident cases, and it’s rare for a driver to wake up one day and decide to get drunk or high before work. More often, there is a pattern of behavior that an attentive, responsible company would be able to catch before something went wrong. Other companies, however, are just so desperate to have warm bodies behind the wheel that they’ll overlook red flags and kick the can down the road, putting lives at risk in the hope they can fly under the radar if things go wrong.
To be clear, I can’t say right now if anything like that happened here. Perhaps this is a privately owned truck, or maybe there were other factors involved which authorities have yet to uncover. That said, I often see people jump to the conclusion that an accident involving drugs is automatically open-and-shut. Assuming that, though, only makes it more likely that something important will slip through the cracks. That’s simply unacceptable. At the very least, a family affected by something like this deserves to know all wrongdoers involved in the accident will be held appropriately accountable. Are proper steps being taken to see that happens here?
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