The estate of a woman killed after her car hit a patch of black ice and careened into a pond is suing the City of Little Rock in a wrongful death civil suit filed on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges one of the woman’s causes of death was the chronic understaffing and underfunding of the City of Little Rock’s Communications Center, which handles 911 calls.
Jinglei Yi and her 5-year-old son, Le Yang, were driving to Le Yang’s preschool in January 2013. Yi’s car hit a patch of black ice near the intersection of Capitol Hill Blvd. and Pennsylvania Ave. Yi’s vehicle left the road and ended up in a pond just south of Capitol Hill Blvd.
According to attorneys for Jinglei Yi’s husband, Dayong Yang, Yi called 911 and was told by an operator that help was on the way. MEMS was dispatched to the scene, but according to attorneys, it was discovered that the operator failed to dispatch police and fire department water rescue, adding that it took approximately 53 minutes from the time Yi called 911 until she and her 5-year-old son were pulled from the submerged vehicle. Yi later died, and her son also died two years later from drowning related injuries.
"I lost my wife, my son - my life," said Dayong Yang, at a press conference announcing the lawsuit on Tuesday.
Yi’s estate also alleges that the city’s Computer Aided Dispatch system failed to be maintained properly. Attorneys claim the intersection Yi was reported to be at was not properly added to the city’s CAD system, saying in a press release on Tuesday, “due to the absence of the intersection of Rushmore Avenue and Cooper Orbit Road in the CAD system, any 911 call specifying that location would require a manual location override.”