Family Wants to End MDOT Program

Detroit Free Press

Teen killed picking up trash on I-696

By L.L. Brasier, Free Press Staff Writer
August 13, 2008

The family of a teenage girl who was struck and killed as she picked up trash along I-696 as part of a program with the Michigan Department of Transportation filed a lawsuit Monday seeking damages from the driver and asking the judge to shut the program down.

Elisa Skinner-Bell, 16, an honors student at Farmington Central High School, was working with Youth Corps, an eight-week program sponsored by MDOT for outstanding students, on June 27 when a 60-year-old driver apparently fell asleep at the wheel and drove into her, State Police say.

In the suit, her family asked Oakland County Circuit Judge Wendy Potts to order that Youth Corps be dismantled.

The suit says the state did not take adequate steps to protect the workers. The suit also claims that there were no cones, signs or barricades to warn drivers of the workers on the side of the road.

"The idea of having kids on the side of the freeway is unconscionable," said Richard Bernstein, the attorney representing the family. "Under no circumstances should the children of Michigan be cleaning up trash along the sides of busy highways."

MDOT officials had not seen the lawsuit Monday and declined to discuss Youth Corps or the suit. "We'll let the courts do their job and we'll comment afterward," MDOT spokesman Bill Shreck said.

Bernstein said the family was motivated to file a suit to stop the program after seeing additional teens doing cleanup work on I-696 weeks after Elisha's death -- again without cones, signs or barricades.

The suit does not seek monetary damages from the state but is seeking damages from the driver, who has not been criminally charged.

"The No. 1 priority for this family is the abolition of this program," Bernstein said. "This is a horribly administrated program; and since the state won't shut it down, we're seeking injunctive relief."

The program, for teens 16 to 18, is billed as a mentoring program that exposes academically gifted teens to state government. Part of those duties included picking up trash along I-696, near Lahser, in Southfield.

Elisha was starting her first day on the job, exiting a van parked alongside the road, when Gary Hill's SUV careened into her.

She died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak a short time later.

A court date to hear the lawsuit has not been set.