Metro workers to blame in lawyer's falling death for not finding him until 4 days later, suit says
Mass transit workers didn’t find a lawyer’s body until four days after his fall at a Washington, D.C., Metro station, a $25 million lawsuit alleges.
The lawyer, 35-year-old Okiemute Whiteru, didn’t receive prompt aid after the fall, leading to his death in October 2013, the suit says. The fall was recorded by video surveillance cameras. The Blog of Legal Times, the Washington City Paper, the Washington Post and USA Today have stories.
The suit (PDF), filed last month, says Whiteru fell from an escalator a short distance onto the subway platform, where he fell backwards a distance of eight feet. He died from a head injury. His body was found behind a parapet wall, the Washington Post reported at the time.
An unnamed source told the Washington Post that the video showed Whiteru was sitting on a three-foot high wall at the station when he fell into a trenchlike well about eight feet deep and rolled underneath the subway platform.
