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Woman’s decapitation at Arches National Park leads to $270M wrongful death claim

Stebot

Stebot

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According to the claim, Michaud, of Denver, and Nakajjigo, a women’s rights proponent from Uganda, were exiting the Arches parking lot on June 13 when a metal gate on the entrance road near the visitors’ center swung into the couple’s car, causing Nakajigo to be “needlessly decapitated.”


No info on how this happened - in a car a swinging gate cuts her head off ?
Anyway we can all be happy she was not needfully decapitated

www.sltrib.com

Woman’s decapitation at Arches National Park leads to $270M wrongful death claim, NBC News reports

Ludovic Michaud, the husband of late human rights activist Esther Nakajjigo, has filed a $270 million wrongful death administrative claim against the National Park Service, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/activist-s-dreams-were-about-come-true-then-horrific-accident-n1245517"...
www.sltrib.com www.sltrib.com
 
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Victims full name
Esther Nakajjigo



Not a lot of info on exactly how it happened.

But just imagine being her husband who witnessed it. Then being in a rural area.
Makes me wonder if he had cell service and called for help, as in removing the body because when someone is decapitated, there isn't anything anyone can do to help the victim.

Or did he have to drive somewhere to get help?


www.nbcnews.com

An activist's dreams 'were about to come true.' Then, a horrific accident cut her life short.

“Our mission is to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the husband of Esther Nakajjigo told NBC News in an exclusive interview.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
.was beheaded by a lance-like gate that swung into her husband’s car
Click to expand...
 
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Amy Comey Barrett will not allow any govt entity to be held responsible for this!

What a fucking bizarre story. Any better articles with footage/pics of this death-gate? Mindblowing. How massive was this thing or how much force was it going that it decapitated someone.

Or was the couple driving along and the gate came down when it shouldnt as they were driving, surely it had to be something like that.
 
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Sorry for your loss Ludovic, but no one's life is worth $270 million. Having your wife meet with an accident that could have been avoided, not just my the Park Service, but you as well (if you were paying attention) should NOT be a fucking Mega Million lottery win. I agree you deserve compensation, but be fucking reasonable.
 
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cubby said:
Excuse my stupidity but how could those gates, the ones in the picture provided by @McDanel, could have decapitated her? They swing horizontally not vertically and she was inside a car, so how?
Click to expand...
They said it cut into the car like butter! The only way I can see that is if someone had used their car to ram the gate and it was swinging back. I don't see the wind having sufficient force.
 
The lawsuit alleged the gate was not properly installed and should've had a padlock to prevent what occurred.
The couple was on their way to get ice cream when "the end of the lance-like gate pierced the side of their car and penetrated it like a hot knife through butter," according to the claim, which was obtained by NBC News.

Deborah Chang, the Los Angeles-based attorney representing Michaud, claimed there was nothing he could do to swerve out of the way of the gate that killed his wife and missed him by a hair.

Michaud, who lived with his Ugandan wife in Denver, Colorado, wasn't injured in the accident, but he told the news station he was completely covered in his wife's blood.

He told NBC that the harrowing accident has left him traumatized, and he continues to suffer from PTSD months after.

"I was a couple of inches from dying, but I didn’t, and right now I have a mission: It’s to make sure what she’s done continues," said Michaud.

Michaud's claim alleges that if the gate had been properly installed or an $8 padlock had been placed to secure it from swinging, the world wouldn't have lost "a young woman influencer destined to become our society's future Princess Diana, Philanthropist Melinda Gates, or Oprah Winfrey."
Click to expand...

www.the-sun.com

Activist, 25, hailed as ‘future Oprah or Princess Diana’ is 'decapitated by gate' at Arches National Park

A YOUNG activist hailed as a “future Princess Diana or Oprah” for her work was decapitated in a gruesome accident while she and her husband were hiking in Arches National Park. Esther N…
www.the-sun.com www.the-sun.com
 
Thank you, I can see that if they hit it hard and it bounced back with the same inertia that sent it flying to start with. I couldn't imagine it happening if they were just driving thru and the wind blew it and the gate just lazily moved back into the closed position.
 
Satanica said:
The lawsuit alleged the gate was not properly installed and should've had a padlock to prevent what occurred.


www.the-sun.com

Activist, 25, hailed as ‘future Oprah or Princess Diana’ is 'decapitated by gate' at Arches National Park

A YOUNG activist hailed as a “future Princess Diana or Oprah” for her work was decapitated in a gruesome accident while she and her husband were hiking in Arches National Park. Esther N…
www.the-sun.com www.the-sun.com
Click to expand...
See that statement about the latch is what makes me think he hit it. The wind was blowing it closed and instead of getting out and pushing it back open he hits it. Just a guess.
 
I think he rammed it at a low speed, say 15mph, he hit the gate slightly off center, more on the right than left side, (which would make the gate hit the passenger side but not the driver's side) and then the gate swung out backwards at 15mph and then swung back towards the car at pretty close to 15mph, that would be enough force to make an iron gate act like a "knife thru butter" on the aluminum of the car. check out Newton's 3rd law, equal and opposite reaction.
 
cubby said:
I think he rammed it at a low speed, say 15mph, he hit the gate slightly off center, more on the right than left side, (which would make the gate hit the passenger side but not the driver's side) and then the gate swung out backwards at 15mph and then swung back towards the car at pretty close to 15mph, that would be enough force to make an iron gate act like a "knife thru butter" on the aluminum of the car. check out Newton's 3rd law, equal and opposite reaction.
Click to expand...
In that case you would have two impact points, those gates usually go against brush, when pushed open, you wouldn’t get much more than a slow swing back if any at all
 
cubby said:
Excuse my stupidity but how could those gates, the ones in the picture provided by @McDanel, could have decapitated her? They swing horizontally not vertically and she was inside a car, so how?
Click to expand...
The gate, being open, apparently was pushed by the wind. I'm going to assume it pierced the windshield and went into her neck end on. This to me is a freak accident. I can't begin to imagine the traumatic horror of this grotesque death, but I don't see liability.
 

Trial begins for woman decapitated at Arches National Park, family seeks $140M​

A widow and his wife’s family are seeking $140 million in damages from the U.S. government more than two years after a woman was killed in a Utah national park.

Ludovic Michaud and his new wife, Esther Nakajjigo, were driving around Arches National Park on a windy spring day in 2020 when a metal gate whipped around, sliced through the passenger door of his car and decapitated Nakajjigo.

Attorneys for Michaud and Nakajjigo’s family gave their opening arguments when the civil trial began Monday. They argue that the U.S. Park Service was negligent and did not maintain the gates at the entrances and exits to the parks, leading to Nakajjigo’s death.

“She was one in a billion, Your Honor,” attorney Randi McGinn told the judge, according to FOX 13 Salt Lake City. Nakajjigo was a Ugandan singer and actress who reportedly did charity work.

“She had like a tremendous potential,” Michaud told the TV station of his late wife. “She could lift mountains, basically, in her own way. I don’t want this incident to reproduce itself ever again.”
Click to expand...
nypost.com

Trial begins for woman decapitated at Arches National Park, family seeks $140M

Ludovic Michaud and his wife’s family are seeking $140 million in damages from the U.S. government after Esther Nakajjigo was killed.
nypost.com nypost.com
 
The complainants include this young woman's parents and her husband. It is 140 million. It appears there is some debt due to a business they young lady had started.
 
@thuumpr
Thank you for the thought provoking response, it piqued my curiosity about the matter, and whether "widow" and "widower" had gone on the chopping block, and I have a personal interest in knowing the answer.

The New York Post story was lifted word for word from Fox, who got their information from AP as media outlets often do.
AP along with Reuters are Primary Sources for most of the news you hear whether it ends up at Fox or CNN l. It's been rewritten by their staff to accommodate their perspective/audience.

There's really no "Fake News".
Media outlets DO curate their choices of stories they present and emphasize and de-emphasize or ignore parts of the source material.
And then you have straight up opinion pieces which are about 2% fact and 98% conjecture and analysis and correlation to support a pov.
We all do this in our personal conversations and debates so the curating of the news and selection of facts presented shouldn't be an enormous surprise to anyone who does the most cursory critical thinking.

Back to "widower".

AP did not use the W-words, nor "surviving spouse".
In the Fox News broadcast of the same story the reporter used the word widower.

Referring to the surviving husband as a widow began in the written version of the story with Fox reporter Pilar Arias.

I read a handful of her news write-ups and
she seems like a good reporter .

So I sent her an email and asked her if it was a conscious decision or perhaps a typo somewhere along the way before publication.

I believe it's common knowledge that Fox and the New York Post are hardly mouthpieces for the "woke Left".

So I poked around the internet to see if this was something that was happening and others were aware of.

I found a lot of discussion about the root meaning ("be empty"), the adjective/verb/noun usages, etc, I'll skip that.

There doesn't seem to be a groundswell in any direction, and my feeling is that maybe because widows and widowers are typically in the older segment of the population they aren't particularly involved in the pronoun debate. And I believe the thrust of the pronoun issue is to be called what you wish.
I don't imagine 90 yo Joe Smith who lost his wife Mabel wants to be called widower but in this news story, the husband is young and he's European, he might have a different preference.

(There were people seeking clarification as to what the proper usage would be with a same sex couple. There's really no consistency or consensus at this point)

So, when/if I hear from Arias I'll let you know, but I'm still of the mind that it was a careless typo.
You caused me to go on an interesting journey though, so I appreciate that.
 
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