Family Angered By Race Night Accident Response

BRISTOL, Va. – Deborah Sue Daniels emerged from six hours of emergency surgery just before dawn Friday with a ventilator tube snaked into her mouth, a patched kidney, and minus her spleen.

The 40-year-old Bristol, Tenn., woman had been caught under the wheel of a tractor-trailer cab as it inched into position to back under a parked trailer on State Street.

It was the close of Food City Family Race Night around 9 p.m. Thursday, and Daniels was among the vendors busily collapsing tents and packing away displays. She apparently failed to see the truck at her back as she knelt to wrestle with her own display tent.

Bristol, Va., police called it a freak accident with no one to blame. But Daniels’ father, Charlie J. Smith, of Kingsport, Tenn., argues that someone should be held accountable for her cracked ribs and punctured lung. It’s too early to tell whether Daniels, a writer for local magazine The Loafer, will make a full recovery. She is being treated at the Bristol Regional Medical Center.

“It took three people just to get her out!” Smith said by telephone on Friday. “I just couldn’t believe they didn’t charge this guy with anything or give him a drug test.”

Operating the rig was Gregory Anthony Hunchuck, a driver for Speedway Children’s Charities, headquartered at the Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. The charity, with a branch in Bristol, Tenn., collects donations through its racing connection and distributes the money to non-profit organizations.

Officials for Speedway Children’s Charities could not be reached at their headquarters on Friday. A secretary who answered the phone said they were all in Bristol for this weekend’s races.

Hunchuck, 43, of Harrisburg, N.C., drove away from the accident with a declaration of innocence by police, mainly because Daniels was below the driver’s line of sight at the time. Police ruled no reckless driving was involved.

In fact, the police report notes that “no improper action” was taken by Hunchuck.

Also, police wrote that Hunchuck “had not been drinking,” even though neither an alcohol or drug test were administered.

“If we thought for one minute he was intoxicated or anything, we would have taken appropriate action on it,” Capt. Maynard Ratcliff told the Bristol Herald Courier on Friday.

Smith disagrees.

He argues that police should have tested for alcohol simply because a tractor-trailer was involved.

“That’s what’s really aggravating me about the police department,” Smith said. “The whole thing was not normal ... it’s like a cover-up the way I see it.”

He pointed to federal regulations that control the commercial driver’s license needed to pilot a tractor-trailer.

But those regulations mandate automatic testing only for fatal trucking accidents, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The law forces the driver’s employer, and not the police, to conduct the test and submit the results for federal review.

The federal law leaves the police to call the shots based on local laws.

With Daniels’ case, where she needed medical help on the spot, Hunchuck would have to be tested only if he had been ticketed by police.

“The employer has the prerogative to do it, but it’s not mandatory,” FMCSA spokesman Duane DeBruyne said.

For now, Smith will settle for an apology from Hunchuck or anyone with Speedway Children’s Charities.

By Friday afternoon, Daniels was breathing without the ventilator and had mouthed some words, her dad said.

Yet there had been no sign at the hospital of anyone associated with the charity.

“I’m still having a hard time coping with that, that they don’t show an interest in my daughter,” he said.

mowens@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2549