HENDERSON, Nev. (KLAS) — The town of Henderson settled Tuesday with the household of a teen killed when a rushing driver hit a well known bump within the street and misplaced management of his automotive.
Rex Patchett, 13, died when Jose Marmolejo, then 21 years previous, struck him on March 7, 2022, on Paradise Hills Drive. In an investigation first aired in November 2023, the 8 Information Now Investigators discovered within the years earlier than Rex’s demise, a number of vehicles had hit the identical impediment within the street, touchdown the place Rex would later combat for his life.
“The bump,” generally referred to within the neighborhood as “Mannion’s Bump” or “Mannion’s Hump,” was an unplanned ridge within the street that grew to become a favourite for racers. Its allowed drivers to go airborne.
Marmolejo was driving greater than 90 miles per hour, police stated after his arrest. Paperwork the 8 Information Now Investigators reviewed confirmed the town was conscious of the bump by prior crash reviews. The town later fastened “the bump” after Rex’s demise.
Complaints to the town in regards to the street and the bump embody one from a neighbor who wrote to the town about “a serious chronic problem,” calling Paradise Hills Drive “a drag strip.”
Nonetheless, two days after Rex’s demise and after years of violent crashes involving the bump, a Henderson worker despatched an electronic mail saying site visitors engineers had been “not aware of [the bump’s] existence.”
The settlement, which the Henderson Metropolis Council permitted of Tuesday, pays the Patchett household $225,000 to settle its lawsuit in opposition to them.
“This settlement represents a full and final resolution of all claims against the city,” an agenda abstract web page stated. “The city does not admit any liability or wrongdoing. Each party will bear its own attorney’s fees and costs of litigation.”
Rex Patchett waves to the digital camera on this ultimate photograph of him taken about an hour earlier than the crash that took his life on March 7, 2022, his father stated. (Jason Patchett)
The settlement settlement was a part of the council’s consent agenda and there was no dialogue about it. The Patchett household declined to remark.
The lawsuit initially concerned the town, Marmolejo and the Clark County Faculty District. A decide later dismissed the declare in opposition to the college district. The lawsuit had claimed each the town and the district knew in regards to the bump and failed to repair it.
A decide sentenced Marmolejo to 2-6 years in jail. The Nevada Parole Board granted him parole final October.
In 2023, Republican Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo signed Rex’s Regulation, growing jail time to a most of 10 years for related circumstances of reckless driving in class zones.
