$2.3 Million Settlement Reached in ’07 Accident

July 16, 2008

Metro has agreed to pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a man whose wife was struck and killed by a Metrobus last year.

Gregory Schoenborn said he wanted to hold the agency accountable for the Feb. 14 accident that killed his wife, Martha Stringer Schoenborn, 59, and her friend Sally Dean McGhee, 54. The women, co-workers at the Federal Trade Commission, were struck by the bus while in a downtown crosswalk.

Holding up two poster-sized photographs of his wife and her friend, Schoenborn called the settlement “blood money.” But he said he hoped that it would lead to better training and safer driving by Metro.

“Today is not a day of closure but the closing of one of the chapters towards healing,” he said.

The Metrobus driver, Victor Kolako, pleaded guilty in September to two felony counts of negligent homicide. In December, he was sentenced to a year in jail.

Read Article Washington Post

Posted By Phoenix AZ Wrongful Death Lawyer.