MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A Florida International University student who was injured last month in the pedestrian bridge collapse told reporters Monday that he's had to pull over his car twice since the collapse because of anxiety he's suffered due to the incident.
Richard Humble said he is overwhelmed by the anxiety of driving under any structure and the pain he's still in from the collapse.
The college sophomore student said there was nothing he or his girlfriend, Alexa Duran, 18, could do after hearing the bridge cracking.
He has since filed a lawsuit against the construction and engineering companies involved in the project and his is just one of a handful that have been filed by the families of the other victims and survivors.
Humble's attorney said they also plan to sue FIU and the Florida Department of Transportation.
"I had her blood on me and I didn't know what to do. She just wasn't moving," Humble said about Duran, who was killed in the accident. "She was the brightest light in my life, really -- always there for me, whenever. There was never a no."
Humble's attorney filed a lawsuit Monday against the companies that helped design and build the pedestrian bridge, which gave way on Southwest Eighth Street last month and killed six people.
"What type of governmental entity would not protect its citizens, and when they are going to do some tightening or adjusting of a project like this not simply shut down the highway?" attorney Stuart Z. Grossman asked.
Humble was in the passenger seat of Duran’s SUV when the bridge collapsed. He said she had offered him a ride to the doctor's office that day when they came to a stop at a red light and heard an ominous sound.
"It sounded like a cracking noise and I was on the side of the bridge that was close to the support beam, so I think it was on the left side that I heard," Humble said.
Eventually, someone used a wooden beam to force open a car door, so Humble could get out and call his mother.
"All I could hear was sirens and Richie screaming and screaming. I couldn't control him. He was frantic. All I could hear was him screaming," Lourdes Humble said.
Richard Humble's attorney said the law firm has hired a team of experts to look at every aspect of the project, including cracking on the structure and why the road was left open during a stress test.
"I just don't know why you could take a chance with something like that, with workers on top of the bridge (and) with people underneath it," Humble said. "There are lots of people who aren't here right now because of that decision."
Jorge Munilla, the president of the head construction company, MCM, said refuted Grossman claim that his company's design-build team did not have extensive experience building post-tension bridges.
Munilla added the company is pre-qualified by FDOT for major post-tension bridge construction.
"We are all anxious to see the results of the NTSB’s investigation into this tragic accident," Munilla said.
