Michelle Bernard said this week she will file lawsuits against the California Highway Patrol and the Oakland Police Department over the East Oakland crash that killed Marvin Boomer and badly injured Nina Woodruff. The legal fight follows a last-fall claim she says she filed with the city of Oakland and never heard back on.
Bernard said the city was negligent because of poor road conditions at the intersection, including a nearby sinkhole, and because of the way Oakland officers responded after the crash. She said CHP contributed to the collision by keeping after the suspect at unsafe speeds and should have called off the pursuit sooner.
The new filing effort matters because Bernard says she is seeking between $10 million and $18 million for Woodruff’s pain and suffering. Woodruff suffered a traumatic brain injury, a broken arm and other broken bones, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Bernard also said the city had been warned for years about the sinkhole where the crash happened, a detail that could shape how the case is argued.
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Last May, suspect Eric Hernandez Garcia was driving close to 100 miles per hour when he fled authorities and crashed in East Oakland. Oaklandside reported that photo and video evidence showed Hernandez Garcia first hit a nearby fire hydrant, shearing it completely off. The hydrant struck Boomer’s upper body and may also have hit Woodruff.
That sequence is what Bernard is aiming at in court. She said, “The City of Oakland and the California Highway Patrol created the danger” and added that both agencies “are responsible for the consequences.” She also said, “Impact. Violence. Silence. Then screaming. The sound of metal hitting human bone echoed across the street. Pieces of the fire hydrant sheared off and exploded upward as a geyser of water blasted into the air.”
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The case is not only about what happened in the street. Bernard said Oakland police officers failed to provide Woodruff medical treatment or support when they arrived and that witnesses heard officers suggest she might have been in the Infiniti that caused the crash. She said that left Woodruff, concussed, bleeding and in shock, to wander away from the scene until a nearby resident took her to the hospital.
Bernard also alleged CHP officers pursued Hernandez Garcia at unsafe speeds, failed to perform a risk assessment in a residential neighborhood and missed two chances to detain him safely. SFist reported last year that CHP had already called off the high-speed chase before the collision, while Oaklandside reported that troopers continued to track and follow Hernandez Garcia after the chase was called off. That gap between the official end of the pursuit and the reported continued tracking could prove central to any lawsuit over who bears responsibility for the crash.
The coming filings will put the city, local police and the state highway patrol into the same legal case over one violent afternoon, and they are likely to test how far police responsibility reaches when a chase ends but the danger does not.
