Tarrant jury awards $39M to Good Samaritan who lost legs in crash on Texas 121
A Tarrant County jury returned a $39 million verdict last week in a civil case over a car crash that ended with a Good Samaritan losing both of his legs, according to court documents.
The plaintiff, David Vaughn, was driving along Texas Highway 121 in Hurst on the night of Aug. 26, 2022, when he found an SUV stopped in his lane of travel, according to the lawsuit. Vaughn steered to avoid the SUV, but clipped the back corner before stopping in front of the vehicle to offer assistance to the driver, Theresa Arrington, the suit stated.
After Vaughn got out of his car, a Nissan Sentra driven by another defendant, Bamwesige Kisuuli, entered the scene at a high rate of speed, according to the suit. Kisuuli swerved, over-corrected and lost control of his car as he tried to avoid hitting Arrington’s SUV, the suit stated.
As a result, Vaughn was struck and pinned between the back bumper of his vehicle and the front bumper of Kisuuli’s Nissan Sentra, according to the suit. The impact ripped Vaughn’s left leg off, and damaged his right leg to an extent that it was later amputated at the hospital.
Kisuuli was intoxicated while speeding in the Sentra, attorneys wrote in the suit. Kisuuli was arrested on a charge of intoxication assault with a vehicle, but a grand jury declined to indict him and the criminal case was dismissed, according to court records.
The lawsuit alleged that Arrington was negligent in choosing not to move her car out of the lanes of oncoming traffic, that Kisuuli was negligent in failing to drive sober and adequately control the car.
Since the time of the crash, Vaughn has lived with chronic pain and phantom limb pain as well as nerve damage, his attorney, Brian Butcher, said.
“The evidence showed that the driver of the car that stalled had ample opportunity to get to a safe place on the shoulder, but chose to come to a rest on the highway,” Butcher said. “After she made that decision, the danger was compounded by the fact that instead of calling for emergency help, she chose to sit on the highway for as much as 30 minutes waiting for a friend to get there.”
The jury’s verdict found that both of the defendants shared some of the responsibility for Vaughn’s injuries. Attorneys for the defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.
Butcher, an attorney with the Fort Worth-area Noteboom Law Firm, will pursue a separate lawsuit against Geico, which provided insurance for the defendants, in an effort to get the insurer to pay the money the jury awarded as damages in the case, he said.
“He feels like an enormous weight has been lifted off his shoulders,” Butcher said of his client. “The lawsuit has added agony on top of agony for several years.”
Butcher described his client as “the type of person who would give the shirt off his back to help somebody.”
“I have no doubt that at the time he was injured, he was trying to help somebody that he saw was exposed to tremendous danger,” Butcher said.
This story was originally published May 20, 2026 at 5:56 PM.
