Road Rage Suit Expands: It was Daddy's Fault
Posted: Sunday, July 03, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
Nine year old Kaitlyn Timko was in the back seat of her father’s car as he drove her home to her mother’s after a custody visit. Another driver became enraged over Thomas Timko’s road manners. He caught up to the rude driver, pulled up next to him and fired four shots from a handgun. Shattered glass and blood from the one bullet that hit Mr. Timko in the head sprayed and splattered throughout the interior of the vehicle. When the police arrived, Mr. Timko was slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious. Kaitlyn was unhurt.
The “once-bubbly child” is frightened to be out of sight of her mother, she is anxious about visits to her father, who is ‘not the same’ anymore. She sometimes struggles to focus on her school work. Her mother, Lori Hardwerk, said, “Before, she was real outgoing, energetic and athletic. Then when it happened, it’s like everything shut down.” Kaitlyn has been receiving weekly therapy through a crime victim’s program, but her mother insists it is not enough. She said of her daughter: “She’s taking tiny baby steps…but she still has a lot of anxiety….”
Ms Hardwerk retained Christopher Culleton, a personal injury attorney, to represent Kaitlyn. A law suit was filed against Mr. Squillaciotti and his wife, Chastity, who was a passenger in the vehicle at the time of the shooting and co-owner of the pick-up truck. Cullenton said, “Clearly, she (Chastity) knows her husband’s got problems, and she’s sitting in the car while he’s driving.” The attorney wants to explore “whether she should have done something….” He said she shouldn’t have let him continue driving in the agitated state he was in from road rage. The Squillaciotte’s, however, appear to have no assets and, since the shooting was intentional, their automobile insurance coverage does not apply.
Foreseeing no success with the Squillaciotti’s, Mr. Cullenton changed tactics in his attempt to get a damages ruling to pay for the intensive counseling Ms Hardwerk feels her daughter needs. They filed suit, in Kaitlyn’s name, in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court against Thomas Timko, Lori’s brain damaged ex-husband and Kaitlyn’s father. They are hoping that Mr. Timko’s auto insurance company will pay off on a negligent driver claim.
Cullenton and Ms Hardwerk claim that Mr. Timko set off a chain of events that led to the gunfire by cutting off the other driver. “He cannot provoke other drivers, especially when he has his kid in the car.” Cullenton said. “Mr. Timko gave him the finger, through the sunroof. That escalated the situation.” It was Timko, not Squillaciotti who precipitated the violence, he claims. Squillaciotti didn’t ‘start it’. He was responding to Timko’s rude behavior and ‘finished it’. Had Timko not acted the way he did, had he not been driving negligently, the incident would never have happened.
Kevin McNulty, Thomas Timko’s attorney, calls the shooting unforeseeable and claims his client did not directly cause it. “In no way was Mr. Squillaciotte’s act of shooting another driver a normal consequence of driving into the lane of travel of another vehicle.” Nor was it an appropriate response to being ‘flipped the bird’. McNulty, who defends insurance companies, wrote a motion to dismiss the case stating that “Mr. Squillaciotti is the proximate cause of her (Kaitlyn’s), alleged emotional distress, not her own father.”
The judge denied the motion, moving the case to the discovery stage. The case is not expected to go to trial for at least a year. Meanwhile, Mr. Culleton will continue to pursue his case against the Squillaciotti’s, incase they do have some undisclosed assets. The delay in the trial may be a blessing. A year from now, if Mr. Timko continues with his rehabilitation efforts, it’s very possible he might realize what is going on when he is sitting in the court room. He may even be able to participate in his own defense by then, if things go well.
This Article has been viewed 763 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Interesting but truly sad. Amazing that Mr. Timko lived and small wonder that Kaitlyn suffered trauma. Both of them, in fact, will be traumatized for the rest of their lives. True he should not have flipped off the other driver, yet where does the other guy come off carting around a gun and worse, using it! Yeah yeah, he was off - unless he is proved to be completely insane, which won't happen, then he is guilty. Yet with our court system and rulings and lawyers and who's got the better lawyer and who'se got big money, on and on, who knows how this will go. Hope that justice prevails.He got 13-26 yrs. The main point is the law suit problems we have. My insurance is high here. Thanks for reading and commentingLaw suits - huge problems in lots of parts of the country. Insurance keeps up with the high awards - and the higher the awards, the higher the insurance gets as a result. Insurance is never going to take the ultimate hits
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.