The Gazette-Enterprise

MCQUEENEY — The trial that will decide whether Texas Lutheran University was negligent in the death of a cross country runner went to the jury late Thursday afternoon.

Arturo and Sylvia Suarez filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of their daughter, Elisa Suarez, who was killed Oct. 24, 2004, when struck from behind by a pickup truck driven by Ernest Bibbs as she ran alongside West Kingsbury Street behind Briesemeister Middle School with a fellow member of the TLU track team.

Suarez, 20, was pronounced dead shortly afterward at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.

Bibbs, 86, didn’t stop to help, although he claimed he went to a convenience store a short distance away and tried to call. He was booked for failure to stop and render aid, but has so far not been tried on the allegation because of competency issues.

In closing arguments, plaintiff’s attorney Michael Watts referenced the Gettysburg Address, asking jurors to ensure that Suarez did not die in vain.

He said it was troubling that there were inconsistencies in accounts of TLU about whether the run Suarez was on in preparation for a track meet was assigned by her coach taken at her own option.

Papers supplied by the university, he said, offered conflicting evidence, as did statements of some witnesses who he pointed out favored the school’s position that it had no control over where Suarez chose to run.

“Elisa Suarez cannot tell you her story,” Watts said. “You are the sole judges of the credibility of the witnesses.”

The run might have been optional, Watts said, but he made it clear he didn’t believe it.

“With all due respect, I think it became a ‘suggestion’ after someone was killed in the run,” he said.

The TLU track handbook, Watts said, did not mention runner safety in spite of the variety of topics it covered.

“They had all sorts of goodies in there about team play and team rules and everything else,” he said. “They mention everything except safety. That might give you a hint as to how much emphasis was put on safety.”

In her summation for jurors, TLU attorney Cynthia Dale Grimes noted that young women who made the TLU track team had years of experience in high school before ever applying. Suarez, she said, had run an estimated 2,000 miles in her high school track career.

“These young women understood the guidelines and they didn’t need written-down rules,” Grimes said. “We’re not talking about inexperienced people.”

Grimes said the Suarez family was attempting to divert guilt from Bibbs to the university and to its retired President, Jon Moline and former track coach, Kandice Holamon Erwin.

“Do not let bias, prejudice or sympathy take a part in your deliberations,” she said. “Elisa’s parents have been through so much, and so as well have the coaches and the people at TLU. But that’s not what this trial is about.”

The trial should have been about Bibbs, she said, and not about TLU.

“There’s been a huge elephant sitting in this courtroom during this trial and you haven’t heard from him,” she told the jurors. “That elephant is Mr. Bibbs. It appears to me that the plaintiffs are protecting Mr. Bibbs.”

Grimes said allegations by the defense that Moline hadn’t acted after being warned by Sheriff Arnold Zwicke of a report of danger to runners on Court Street were a “rabbit trail” laid by the plaintiffs to suggest guilt on the part of the school.

Even had Moline acted, she said, the reported situation was ambiguous and had nothing to do with Suarez. Another rabbit trail, she said, was alleging the death of a Luling student on U.S. 90 a year before should have served as a danger warning to TLU administrators.

“It was a completely different situation,” Grimes said.

Still, Erwin had purchased more reflective equipment for her runners to wear, Grimes said.

Lastly, Grimes said, tragic as the accident was, Suarez was running with traffic instead of against it as traffic laws and her coach recommended.

“This case is about caution where drivers of automobiles have a duty and obligation to brake, to watch for pedestrians and not drive off the road,” Grimes said. “Maybe the best thing for the Suarezes might be to tell them it wasn’t Elisa’s fault and it wasn’t TLU’s fault.”

The Suarez family has asked for unspecified damages, including punitive damages. Jurors continue deliberations this morning.

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