Tornado chasers face storm as lawsuit hits close to home

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47720417

Tornado chasers face storm as lawsuit hits close to home

By Roland Hughes & Toby Luckhurst
BBC News

5 hours ago

For a few brief seconds, the rain stopped pummelling the front windscreen of the storm chasers' truck.

Not that the weather was clearing - Kelley Gene Williamson and Randall Yarnall were heading northbound directly towards the storm. At the time, on 28 March 2017, they were covering the event for the Weather Channel programme Storm Wranglers.

As they neared a junction a few miles outside Spur, Texas, a bright red Stop sign came into view on the right-hand side of the road.

Yarnall was driving his Chevrolet truck at about 70mph (113km/h) at the time, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday. A video the friends were live-streaming for the Weather Channel's Facebook page showed they made no attempt to stop at the junction.

The footage cut out a split second before a Jeep driven by Corbin Jaeger drove westbound into the junction. Jaeger, who had the right of way, was driving away from the storm.

Williamson, Yarnall and Jaeger - a respected storm chaser working for the National Weather Service - were all killed on the spot.

The lawsuit, filed by Jaeger's mother, seeks up to $125m (£95m) in damages. It puts the blame firmly at the door of Williamson and Yarnall, whom it calls "habitually reckless and dangerous", as well as the Weather Channel.

The lawsuit also alleges that the network's "concept of presenting storm chasing as an adventurous, thrilling sporting event and to make its two stars 'heroes'" caused her son's death.
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