Survivors of SLO County crash that killed Josh Turner crew member sue tour bus company
Members of country singer Josh Turner’s road crew who survived a deadly tour bus crash on Highway 46 East near Shandon are suing a Tennessee company that operated the group’s bus, as well as Turner’s management company.
The September 2019 crash, which occurred after a concert at Vina Robles Amphitheatre in Paso Robles on a stretch of highway locally known as “Blood Alley” for a series of deadly vehicle collisions, killed sound engineer David Joe Turner of Oxford, Mississippi. He was not related to Josh Turner.
Josh Turner and his band were traveling in a separate bus at the time and were not involved in the crash, which occurred about 15 minutes away from the popular North County concert venue.
It remains unclear what caused the driver of the bus — Murfreesboro, Tennessee, resident Bradley Dratnol — to leave the roadway, crash through a barbed wire fence and continue on for about 200 yards through dense vegetation before driving the bus off the edge of a creekbed.
David Turner, 64, and another occupant of the bus were ejected from the vehicle.
At the time, the CHP said seven people, including Dratnol, were injured.
The civil complaint filed in San Luis Obispo Superior Court on Friday seeks damages from All Access Coach Leasing, which maintained and operated the bus;
Dratnol, who was an All Access employee at the time; and Modern Management, a talent management company that lists Josh Turner and several other Nashville, Tennessee-based artists as clients.
Both companies are based in Tennessee, and neither had filed any responses in court as of Tuesday.
A request for comment to the law firm representing the plaintiffs was answered with an emailed statement from Ronald L. M. Goldman, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in commercial transportation litigation.
“This case is not just about negligent driving. It’s about dangerous motor coaches on our highways with no safety equipment to protect the passengers, not even seatbelts,” Goldman wrote.
A request for comment from All Access Coach Leasing was not immediately returned Tuesday.
CHP officials completed their investigation into the crash in January, but have yet to have yet to release a suspected cause for the crash.
The CHP in January denied a Tribune request for its final investigative report, which the agency forwarded to the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office for potential criminal charges related to the incident.
Assistant district attorney Eric Dobroth said Monday that his agency’s review of the CHP investigation is ongoing.
The complaint filed in San Luis Obispo Superior Court on behalf David Turner’s estate and two other crew members accuses All Access Coach Leasing and Modern Management of wrongful death, negligent and defective design of the bus, and negligent hiring.
It seeks an unspecified amount of financial damages for funeral and burial costs, wages lost, and other expenses, which the plaintiffs say they plan to prove at a jury trial.
Dratnol is also listed as a defendant.
According to the lawsuit, All Access Coach Leasing manufactured, designed, and installed the interior structure of the 2005 Prevost XL2 Motor Coach bus, which crashed on Sept. 18, 2019, on Highway 46 East less than a mile east of West Centre Street.
The crash site was only a few miles from the location of the infamous wreck that killed James Dean on Sept. 30, 1955, near the Cholame “Y,” where Highway 41 branches off from Highway 46.
“At said time and place, (the bus) was driven off the roadway, over rumble strips, and without any apparent braking or other attempt to correct, steer, or otherwise stop or divert the track of the vehicle as it sped through fences and over flat grassy areas, and then over a cliff where it crashed,” the lawsuit reads.
The complaint alleges that the two companies didn’t exercise reasonable care and should have known that the bus was in a dangerous and defective condition — including the absence or seat belts, which created a reasonably foreseeable risk of injury to its passengers.
The complaint alleges that David Turner and the two other crew members were the primary wage earners for their families, who have lost wages and other medical and burial expenses through the incident.
A court hearing has been scheduled for September.
