Truck Driver Shot in Face with Bottle Rocket, Tank Truck Crashes

As often as I call attention to news stories of horrible crashes caused by the negligence of trucking companies and their drivers, I must point out that they are not always at fault.
At 2 AM today, July 5th, a tank truck driver was shot in the head with a bottle rocket by one of a gang of juveniles on Donald Hollowell Parkway (formerly Bankhead Highway) in southwest Atlanta. Others in the gang apparently threw bricks and chunks of concrete at the truck. The truck, carrying 7500 gallons of diesel fuel, flipped over and began leaking. The truck driver has serious face and head injuries. Police evacuated nearby apartments. See news story. While he lay injured in his overturned truck, these thugs broke the truck windows, pulled him out, beat and robbed him. He required seven hours of brain surgery, and apparently has a long road to recovery.
I am too familiar with the mean streets in the area where this happened due to work on a negligent security / carjacking & murder case a few years ago. Having examined criminal incident reports for a single convenience store in the area and interviewed police officers, I have warned my family members to never get off I-285 at any exit in that vicinity, even in daytime.
Given the usual performance of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, the savage animals who attacked the trucker will probably be on the street long before their victim gets out of the hospital. I could go on a riff about men who sire children but don’t raise them, leaving it to welfare moms to raise fatherless sons and daughters in crack-infested public housing projects, but that’s a subject for another forum.

The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a “SuperLawyer” in Atlanta Magazine and one of the “Legal Elite” in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, Chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck wrecks and accidents (tractor trailers truck wrecks, semi truck wrecks,18 wheeler truck wrecks, big rig truck wrecks, log truck wrecks, dump truck wrecks).