Faulty truck may have led to fatal crash
St. Petersburg Times - Saturday, July 12, 2003
Author: SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Carbon monoxide fumes leaking from a broken exhaust pipe in his 10-ton truck might have left driver James K. Scheffler so disoriented Wednesday, he confused his gas pedal for the brakes as he approached a stop sign, slamming into a Mercury Grand Marquis and killing three generations of one family.

The 1973 Ford truck, belonging to Southern Septic & Sewer of Ruskin, also had bald tires and broken springs, according to the Florida Department of Transportation and traffic homicide investigators from the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office. But investigators ultimately could not say for sure that the exhaust leak or other truck defects caused the crash , so 70-year-old Scheffler likely won't face criminal charges.

"We'll take everything to the State Attorney, but it doesn't look like enough for criminal charges," Lt. Rod Reder, Hillsborough Sheriff's office spokesman, said Friday.

Cleo "Trudy" Broome, 66, died with her 47-year-old daughter, Janis Creason , and her 32-year-old granddaughter Amy Creason , when Scheffler drove through a stop sign at the Interstate 75 exit at Sun City Center and slammed into their Mercury as they traveled east on County Road 674.

Investigators cited Scheffler, a career truck driver and longtime employee of Southern Septic, for going through the stop sign and for operating a vehicle with unsafe equipment.

It is the fifth time since 1998 that Scheffler has been cited for driving defective or unsafe equipment. Adjudication was withheld in two cases, but he was found guilty in 1998 and 2002, state records show. Scheffler and Southern Septic owner Dean Driggers did not return phone calls Friday. Jim Long, director of operations and safety for the Florida Trucking Association in Tallahassee, said there are industry rules meant to keep faulty trucks off the road.

The federal government requires annual inspections for any truck over 10,000 pounds, and drivers must go through an inspection before taking trips, Long said.

"They're not supposed to operate it if there's a situation that could affect the vehicle's safety," he said. "But there will always be bad apples in an industry as large in this one."

A bitter loss to a tight-knit community. The loss of Trudy Broome and her daughter and granddaughter is being felt throughout Ruskin and especially on Meridian Street, where Trudy and Dean Broome have lived since the mid 1960s. The Broomes and their five children quickly learned this is a tight-knit neighborhood, where parents help raise the children down the street because they know the favor will be returned. It's the kind of place where a girl can fall in love with the boy next door and marry him years later, as the Broomes' daughter Sheila did when she married Troy Burdick.

"That little community has grown up raising each other's kids," said Sandy Council, a Ruskin business owner who taught some of the Broome children during her six years at Ruskin Elementary. "So losing three people like that - everybody on that street feels like they lost their own."

Trudy Broome stayed close to her neighborhood, Council said, and was dedicated to her role as a wife and stay-at-home mom.

"She would do things at school like a homeroom mother, but she was mostly a behind-the-scenes mom," Council said. "She always saw them off in the morning and was there when they came home."

Mrs. Broome had four daughters - Janis, Sheila, Tammy and Trena - and one son, Mike, who died in 1981 at the age of 20. Mrs. Broome's husband, Dean, is retired from TECO. Janis Creason left Ruskin for the Atlanta area 25 years ago, but she followed her mother's example by rearing her children with dedication and passion, said Creason 's former husband, Larry Foster, father of Amy Creason and 27-year-old Jon Creason. Foster, an Atlanta environmental consultant and owner of Enviro-Cure Services, is credited with coining the phrase "sick building syndrome" in the early 1970s. He said Janis helped him pore through data and research on the health dangers of mold in buildings.

"She was dedicated to our cause, to finding out why children were getting sick," said Foster, who was divorced from Janis about 10 years ago. "Jan and I discussed many times that this was our crusade, our personal goal in life."

He described his daughter Amy as a very loving person, who doted on her pet dog Ginger like a child - good practice for when her son Tyler was born a decade ago. Tyler had come to Ruskin from Georgia with his mother and his grandmother to visit his great-grandparents. He stayed at the Broome household Wednesday while the women went out. Gold Bank in Ruskin, where Janis Creason 's sister Sheila Burdick is a manager, has set up a fund in Tyler Creason 's name. Foster said his son Jon, who flew to Tampa after the accident, is trying to stay strong.

"But he is in shock. I don't know of anyone that has ever lost his mother, his sister and his grandmother all at once."