The parents of an 11-year-old girl who was killed when a dump truck collided with her school bus in February have filed a civil lawsuit against the drivers of both vehicles and their employers.
Anthony and Susan Teszla filed the suit Wednesday in Burlington County Superior Court in Mount Holly. They are seeking unspecified damages from the accident, which claimed the life of their daughter, Isabelle, and seriously injured her triplet sisters, Sophie and Natalie.
The accident occurred February 16 when a dump truck struck the back of a school bus at the intersection of County Road 528 and Old York Road in Chesterfield Township. The bus then slammed into a utility pole. In addition to Isabelle Teszla's death, 17 other students were hospitalized as a result of the accident.
The driver of the bus, 66-year-old John Tieman, was cited for failing to stop or yield at the intersection. The driver of the dump truck, 38-year-old Michael Caporale, received summonses for failure to secure container, failure to tarp load, inadequate braking, exceeding gross weight, exceeding tire weight limit and over axle weight. The results of toxicology tests released Friday said that Tieman had therapeutic levels of prescription drugs in his system that "would not have impaired his ability to operate the bus at the date and time of the collision." Tests on Caporale came back completely negative.
In addition to the two drivers, the civil suit names as defendants Herman's Trucking of Wrightstown, the owners of the dump truck; the bus company, Garden State Transportation of Southampton; construction companies South State Inc. of Bridgeton, Cumberland County, and Wynham Construction LLC of Blackwood, Camden County. The suit alleges that the last two defendants ran a construction site where the dump truck was overfilled with asphalt before the crash.
The suit also claims that Tieman had not been properly trained by Garden State Transportation and had a predilection for accelerating before children were seated. Additionally, the suit charges that the suspension of Caporale's driver's license in 2003 should have served as a predictor of future accidents and states that Herman's should have assigned him to non-driving positions.
The accident remains under investigation by both local and state authorities, as well as by the National Transportation Safety Board.
