Bill Cunningham, the Grand American. Of course, today reds Baseball is off.
They're in Milwaukee Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in the Big Tree Game
set reds Andy. You play their best then. But until then, on
January the eleventh, I can recall when this event took place. A metro
bus driver is facing only misdemeanor charges in the crash that happened on January the
eleventh. His name is forty seven year old Dion Willis. He's been charged
for four counts of vehicular homicide, one count of vehicular homicide and a crash
that killed eighty seven year old Beverly Kenny. And this fine woman was in
a crosswalk with the signal and for some reason unknown, the bus was attempting
to turn right on a Duck Creek Road from Dana and failed to yield to
a pedestrian inside the crosswalk with a walk signal in her favor. And joining
us now is Rex Elliott. He's the fine personal injury attorney representing the family.
And Rex Elliott Welcome to the Bill Cunningham Show. And Rex, can
you tell the American people? I kind of briefly went over some of the
facts. What are the facts as you know them to be at this point,
Yeah, Bill, The reality is that Beverly Kenny. First, let
me tell you about her. She was an eighty seven year old going on
fifty. She walked four to five miles a day. She was scheduled to
go on a three hundred and thirty mile Pike ride from Pittsburgh to DC.
A week ago. She volunteered at you know, Kennedy's all throughout the city
of Cincinnati. This stamp not only lost an extraordinary person, the community of
Cincinnati lost the servant. What happened on January eleventh is she was headed down
the construction side of the new Cincinnati Public Radio to check it out. She
was on her daily walk, perfectly sunny day. She was on her way
back home. Dion willison Is fourteen to sixteen ton City bus saw her the
entire way as he was approaching that intersection. He sat at that intersection for
twenty five seconds while Beverly was standing right there on the corner. She got
the green walk light with about ten feet across the road and Dion Willis made
that wide turn and ran rover killed her. And then by the way after
he ran her over he got out of his bus, he checked it out,
went back in the bus, and backed it up again, with the
human life beneath his machine. Now the reality is that Dion willis Is driving
history indicated that he never should have even been hired by Sorda. He had
been fired from two prior garbage truck jobs for safety violations. He had six
licensed suspensions and three crashes on his record before he even applied with Soorda.
And then he gets to Soorta and during training he said, he told him
he has tunnel vision. They said he doesn't multitask well. They said he
takes un necessarily wide turns. They had all kinds of problems with him in
the training situation, and then they hire him in February of twenty and eighteen,
And in December of twenty and eighteen, he runs a red light and
puts a twenty four year old kid, to Carlo Fowler, in a wheelchair
for the rest of his life. To Carlo Fowler was broadsided by Willis.
He spent two months in a coma, two years in a hospital, and
is now in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He had a
long list of driving citations another six crashes while he was a sort of driver,
and at the time he hit Beverly Kenney on January eleventh, he was
driving on a suspended license. I mean, it's unfathomable how this guy was
behind the wheel of the city bus as far as Beverly herself eighty seven years
old, going on fifty five. It is miles from the incident site to
the new construction of Public Radio downtown. So this woman had to be vibrant
and alive and walking around the city. And as many do, especially when
you get elderly, you pay attention to signals. It says walk or don't
walk, And you're saying Beverly waited until the walk light came on. Then
she walked into a mark crosswalk. And there's every indication the drivers, the
driver knew she was there, right. It was a perfectly sunny afternoon.
Her shadow stretched across the street. And we're talking about a rule follower here.
Beverly Kenny, on her daily walks, would many days pick up crash
along the road. That was her mission was to improve the city of Cincinnati.
She volunteered at La Soup, a soup can kitchen. She volunteered at
ten thousand villages, an apparel and you know, sort of a trinket place
for underprivileged folks. She was a talk about a great American. She volunteered
at Cincinnati Public Radio. She was a rule follower. This guy was about
as reckless as I said it the other day. I wouldn't have put this
guy behind the wheel of a golf cart, let alone the city bus.
He couldn't. He couldn't operate garbage trucks. And by the way, by
the way, Rex, I have great respect for Rumky and the garbage men.
I have a pretty good relationship with the guy that picks up my garbage.
The Rumpky driver up every day at four o'clock in the morning, working
hard in rain and snow and ice and hot hauling around garbage. I have
great respect for garbage trucks, but I want to have more respect for metro
drivers actually driving buses, affecting human lives. And you're saying that Dion Willis
didn't have enough skills to operate a garbage truck. He didn't, and he
didn't have it. He didn't have enough skills to operate a big wheel,
for God's sake, And by the way, Sorida had a long history of
putting bad drivers in the position. Back in twenty sixteen, they had a
driver by the name of Tyrone Patrick who killed a guy named Stephen Frank under
almost the exact same circle. Sants that Tyrone Patrick ran over Stephen Frank and
his daughter Emily Frank in a cross walk on January twenty seven, twenty sixteen.
Tyrone Pratt Patrick had been involved in thirty nine crashes as a metro driver
before he mowed down Stephen Krank. Frank sort of didn't learn their lesson.
They've been to put Dion Willicks behind the wheel of a buck. He then
mowed down, you know, to Carlo Fowler, who's in a wheelchair today,
and then kills Beverly Kenny on January eleventh, twenty twenty four. It
was Frankly a miracle that he didn't kill somebody else before he killed Beverly.
It's a travesty and a senseless and unnecessary depth. The reality is, we
don't put, you know, pilots behind the control of the airplane. We
don't say, hey, one or two is okay? One or two planes
going down are okay? We got to pay a little more attention to the
safety of the drivers that were putting behind these fison machine you know, Rex
Elliott. Sometimes the argument has made an injury cases that the person is old,
they don't have much life to live. Their life is not as valuable
as someone who's thirty five or forty years old. Many times you have to
reduce the present value someone's life. So if someone forty years old gets tragically
killed, you say, got thirty years of life, you make fifty thousand
a year, that's one point five million, reduce it to present value at
five percentage? Ters how much money is that? And so I hear the
other side of the argument, that is, if you're older, life is
more precious when there's less of it to waste. And so how would you
respond to the argument that somehow, well, after all, she was eighty
seven years old and she didn't have much economic value left, and what the
hell? How would you respond to that? Yeah? Well, I couldn't
agree with you more. First of all, if you have had the ability
to navigate the treacherous waters of life for eighty seven years, you have the
right to go out on your own terms, not because of some stupidity like
this. Secondly, you know, in my interviews with Beverly's grandchildren, they
told me they expected that she would outlive them. And even more importantly,
Bill this community, the city of You know, many times people die and
the family's had a tragic, terrible loss. In this particular case, the
city of Cincinnati lost a tremendous servant, somebody. You know. This is
a person that every day on her walk, she made it a point to
say hello to people, whether they set hello to her or not. This
is the value of this life. Was is about as extraordinary as I've seen
in thirty five years doing this kind of work. Now, lastly, he's
only charged with misdemeanors. Would you look forward to this, Dion willis character
getting more than a misdemeanor because in Cincinnati today, those who are convicted of
misdemeanors seldom have ever gone to jail. If what you're saying is accurate,
I have no reason to believe it isn't shouldn't it be charged with a felony?
I believe he may well be charged with a felony for this reason.
On he was driving on a suspended license. Statutorily, that gives the prosecutor
the ability to charge him with a felony. He was operating his personal vehicle
eighty eight miles an hour in a fifty five in Franklin County in November twenty
twenty three. He blew off the court day, so they suspended his license.
He went in on December thirteenth and paid the fine, but they told
him they gave him a slip of paper that said, your license is suspended.
It is not going to be reinstated until you take more steps, including
paying the reinstatemency. It was still suspended. On January eleventh, Dion Willis
killed Beverly Kenney. And you know what he did. The very next day,
he runs to the DMV and pays his reinstatementcy. You know why,
because I guarantee you. In his own mind, he said, uh,
oh, I'm in trouble now. I killed her on a suspended license.
I got to clean this up, and I think that's going to be the
basis for a felony charge. To go back to your first comments, Are
you saying that Dion Willis hit her and then got out, got back in
the bus and rolled back over her again. Yeah, well we don't know
if you rolled back over her, but we know that she was underneath the
bus. The video, By the way, we have dash camp video,
inside video of the bus, outside video of the bus. It is as
horrific and gruesome as any video I've seen, and I've seen a lot of
bad video. He hit her, she was underneath the bus. He jumps
out of the bus on the video, runs back in the bus, hits
it, reversing, takes the bucks back a few feet with the human life
underneath his bucks. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just
crazy that somebody like this is behind the wheel of a metro bus. Somebody
had to begin to take a look at SORTA and the driving record of some
of these folks. They're there, you know. SORTA is funded largely by
you know, state and local you know taxes, along with some federal fundings.
Somebody, did they Cincinnati City Council. Somebody's got to start taking a
look at sort of because all sort of set up to now is hey,
we're sorry for the family. I don't get any indication that they're going to
dig in and find out how in the world this guy was still driving.
Well, for those who ride buses, for those who enter running to have
interplay with buses. The best in the brides should be bus drivers. We
used to have a caller here named Don who was a wonderful metro bus driver
that spent his entire career and had no accidents whatsoever. And Don has moved
on to his rewards in heaven. But I would hope that Dean Willis receives
a full measure of justice. And once again, Rex Elliott, personal injury
Attorney, Rex Elliott, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham showing good
luck to you. Thank you, Bill. It's been an honor God bless
America. Thank you, Rex. Let's continue with more if line becomes available.
Five three, seven, four nine, seven thousand. Don't cunning into
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