Burning Atlanta

Excellent. I'd like to see every employer pay when one of their illegal hires commits a crime, especially on company time. I'm no lawyer but I don't think this kind of lawsuit is unusual, illegal alien or not. If you have an employee get drunk and plow a company vehicle into somebody you might be facing a big bucks civil trial. I'm a little surprised that the family would file now rather than wait for the criminal charges to be resolved but I guess that really doesn't matter. I have little doubt thye won't proceed with the civil case until after the criminal part is adjudicated.

I hope the family wins, BIG.

An illegal immigrant charged with killing two people in a South Richmond car crash now faces a $2.3 million wrongful-death suit filed by the family of one of the victims.

The administrators of the estate of Kathryn L. Jones, who was fatally injured in the May 24 wreck, also has named as a defendant the construction company for which Carmen Alejandro Garcia-Hernandez was employed.

Garcia-Hernandez was driving a pickup truck registered to R.J. Biringer Construction Co. Inc., whose owner, Ronald J. Biringer, is under federal indictment for transporting illegal immigrants.

Richmond police allege that Garcia-Hernandez was driving the truck when it ran off Snead Road and hit a parked car that spun around and fatally injured two people standing next to it, Jones, 44, and Joseph Owens, 40, of Alberta in Brunswick County.

Jones, a native of South Hill and the mother of two children, lived in the neighborhood were the crash occurred and was attending a house-warming party when she was struck, said Charles H. Cuthbert Jr., her attorney. She had been employed several years as a security guard for Wackenhut Corp., he said.

After the crash, police said Garcia-Hernandez, 28, tried to flee the scene on foot, but witnesses detained him until officers arrived. He was indicted June 9 on two counts of aggravated involuntary manslaughter, driving while intoxicated and felony hit-and-run driving.

According to the lawsuit, Garcia-Hernandez had a blood-alcohol level of 0.15, nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08.

His employer, Ronald Biringer, was indicted March 19 by a federal grand jury in Richmond on a single count of transporting illegal immigrants to Fort Lee. He was arrested a day later and released on bond.