Truck driver charged in deadly Georgia pleads guilty
Johnson was driving a tractor-trailer toward Savannah in the early morning of April 22, 2015, when his big truck smashed into stop-and-go traffic backed up by an unrelated wreck. The impact crushed two vehicles directly in front of Johnson's truck, killing five student nurses. The women were commuting from Georgia Southern University in Statesboro to their shifts at Savannah hospital.
Johnson's employer, Total Transportation of Mississippi, ultimately agreed to pay $78 million to settle civil suits by the victims' families. Company executives revealed in legal depositions that they hired Johnson even after he disclosed a previous employer had fired him for crashing his truck after falling asleep at the wheel.
In his own deposition in the civil cases, Johnson acknowledged under oath that the deadly Interstate 16 crash was his fault, but insisted he was awake.
In the criminal case, prosecutors made the unusual move of bringing charges against Total Transportation as a corporation. District Attorney Tom Durden agreed to drop his case against the company last week in exchange for Total Transportation spending an additional $200,000 to establish an education fund for student nurses.
