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Jury awards family $3.7M By David Conti TRIBUNE-REVIEW Thursday, September 29, 2005 An Allegheny County jury Wednesday awarded nearly $3.7 million to the family of a Regent Square woman who was killed by a van last year while crossing Braddock Avenue with her dog near Frick Park. "The thing that probably upset the jury more than anything else was that the city had complaints about this stretch of road and chose to ignore them," said attorney John P. Gismondi, who represented Evelyn H. Wei's relatives in their lawsuit against the city of Pittsburgh and the van driver. Wei, 33, a researcher at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Oakland, died Jan. 23, 2004, two days after being struck by a van driven by Jan Jones, 63, of Swissvale. Her death prompted community groups in Regent Square, Edgewood and Swissvale to push for more street signs and increased police patrols on the busy East End thoroughfare. But Gismondi said Pittsburgh officials had been asked before Wei's death to fix what he said is a dangerous stretch of road. During the trial that began Sept. 20, jurors saw copies of written complaints filed with Mayor Tom Murphy's service center and e-mails to city officials asking for signs warning drivers of pedestrian crosswalks. The jury deliberated for about 90 minutes before agreeing with Gismondi. Jurors assigned about 20 percent of the blame to the city and 80 percent to Jones, Gismondi said. "The city said they were not at fault, that the driver was responsible," Gismondi said. "We claimed the city bore part of the responsibility because there were a lot of complaints about the road and they should have done something to make it better." Jones testified that she never saw Wei and the dog standing in a crosswalk before her van struck them. The dog died the same day. Police said Jones was not speeding. She was cited for reckless driving and failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Jones' attorney, Jeffrey Ramaley, did not immediately return a call for comment. City lawyers and a spokesperson for Murphy could not be reached. In the months after Wei's death, new pedestrian crossing signs were installed along the road. Officials also repainted the crosswalk lines in the street, erected an electronic sign that shows drivers how fast they are traveling in the 25 mph zone and placed "Yield to Pedestrian" signs in the middle of the street. Wei received a doctorate in psychiatric epidemiology in 1999 from the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health and was a senior research principal in the school's department of psychiatry. Her mother, Yuling L. Wei, is a senior research associate in the school's department of epidemiology. Evelyn Wei's parents and her husband, Michael Sukel, are expected to make their first public comments on her death at a news conference this morning.
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