Parents of Gary teen involved in crash sue

HAMMOND, Ind. – The parents of a teenager who died after a car crash sued Gary police for $50 million Monday, saying officers’ decision not to look for their son robbed him of a chance of surviving.\nWillie and Jacqueline Green of Gary said they do not believe their 18-year-old son, Dominique, died instantly from the multiple injuries he suffered in the crash, as authorities have said. They said at a news conference that a mortician has told them that bruising, swelling and other signs of injury on their son’s body were not consistent with an instantaneous death.\n“The city did nothing, the police did nothing,” said Jacqueline Green. She cited the statements of the car’s driver, Darius Moore, to officers that her son and a second passenger, Brandon Smith, also 18, were missing at the accident scene.\n“He kept telling them, over and over and over again, that there were two more boys down there,” she said.\nThe lawsuit filed Monday in Lake County Superior Court in Hammond seeks $10 million in actual damages and $40 million in punitive damages. It names as defendants the city of Gary, Police Chief Thomas Houston and Officer Jeffrey Westerfield, who was at the scene of the crash in the early hours of Sept. 16.\nThe mayor’s office referred requests for comment Monday to the office of the city’s corporation counsel, who did not return two phone messages left at his office.\nPolice and other responders to the crash did not find the bodies of Green and Smith. Instead, Smith’s father discovered them in weeds six hours later, after the sun came up. He has said the bodies were 15 to 20 feet from the wreck.