Moments after a 2017 nighttime crash killed a father and two young children in a work zone along Beltway 8, Houston police watched highway construction workers hustle into the area and attempt to erect a sign warning drivers about a planned closing, according to new allegations filed in a lawsuit.

The day after the fatal crash, the construction company, Webber LLC, took dashcam video showing all the required signs in place in the work zone, which it later submitted as evidence in its defense against the lawsuit, the petition states.

“The district attorney needs to investigate that and TxDOT needs to investigate that,” plaintiff’s attorney Cade Bernsen said. “It is outrageous. The way they shut the highway down was messed up.”

Webber, through a spokeswoman, declined comment Friday, citing the ongoing lawsuit.

The Texas Department of Transportation, though not a party to the lawsuit, also declined comment because it involved litigation related to one of its projects.

The company is being sued by Roxane Freeman, whose husband and children were killed in the crash. The lawsuit accuses Webber, a major road builder based in The Woodlands, of negligence in the crash that killed Heywood Freeman, 41, and their two children, Heywood Jr., 5, and Halynn, 4.

Heywood Freeman was driving west with the children in the backseat along Beltway 8 near JFK Boulevard, south of Bush Intercontinental Airport, on July 21, 2017, when he entered the construction zone where Webber was widening the freeway. Traffic slowed and eventually came to a stop. A driver in a Ford F-250 pickup slammed into the back of Heywood’s Chevrolet Cavalier, crushing the small sedan and setting off a chain-reaction of wrecks along the freeway.

Heywood Freeman and both children were killed.

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Series of mistakes

In an amended petition in the case filed Jan. 17, Freeman’s lawyers outline a series of mistakes and omissions they say were made by Webber that left drivers unaware they were entering a work zone on July 21, 2017, leading to the fatal crash.

Among them:

Houston-based TxDOT officials repeatedly warned the company, starting in September 2016, about deficiencies in its record keeping and management of lane closures, including signs missing during active closings.

TxDOT withheld payment of $38,345.94 to the company on June 1, 2017, 51 days before the crash, for “for failing to provide and properly maintain traffic signs and barricades in compliance with contract requirements.”

The project engineer chosen to managed the closing schedule had never overseen traffic management in his role.

The day after the crash, Webber used a dashboard camera to film the construction zone, showing all the signs erected as required, contrary to the police reports, then submitted the video as proof the company followed procedures.

The most significant allegation in the lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial on May 25, is the claim that Houston police on the scene witnessed workers trying to install warning signs after the crash.

“A worker from the construction zone attempted to put out a 48-inch-by-48-inch ‘FRWY CLOSED AHEAD’ sign on the right shoulder,” One officer wrote. “The sign was one of the many signs listed in the TxDOT traffic control freeway closure plan… the sign that the construction worker attempted to place in the road should have been there prior to the freeway closure.”

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Another investigator, a captain with Houston police, noted that a sergeant at the scene saw a man with a sign marked “3 lanes closed construction” walking into the scene from the exit ramp to JFK Boulevard. Police were unable to identify the man, the captain said.

“I have entered this supplement to document the fact that this particular sign was not present at the time of the crash,” the captain’s report states.

The statements, from the police investigation file, are quoted liberally in the updated lawsuit, which also includes police photos taken at the scene showing the signs set aside on the road and not erected as intended.

“It was a cover-up and the reason they got caught is, thank God, (Houston Police) got out there quickly and had their body cams… and took the time to write it in the report,” Bernsen said. “If they had not done that, we would all be in the dark.”

Original charges dropped

Witnesses told police the pickup driver, Alex Addy, had been going well above the speed limit when he slammed into the back of Freeman’s car. Investigation, however, showed the truck was going about 60 mph, five mph below the normal speed limit on Beltway 8, but above the 45-mph work zone standard.

The Harris County district attorney’s office charged Addy with criminally negligent homicide, but a subsequent grand jury declined to act on the charges.

Prosecutors supported dropping the case, with Sean Teare, head of the district attorney’s vehicle crimes division, calling the signage “inadequate” in late 2018, but saying he could not elaborate on how officials came to that conclusion.

Freeman sued Addy in late 2017, but dropped the case last year, days after she filed the lawsuit against Webber and two of the companies that assisted the contractor with road closings. Neither of the subcontractors were involved in the closing the night of the crash.

The only available portions of the police report are those quoted in Bernsen’s amended filing. The Houston Chronicle sought the full police investigation for the crash in September 2018, but was denied. Police investigation files are not public records, but available to the lawyers in civil lawsuits.

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Webber is one of the region’s largest civil construction firms. In addition to the work on the Beltway between the Hardy Toll Road and Interstate 45, it oversaw construction of portions of the widened U.S. 290 within the Sam Houston Tollway, the Grand Parkway northeast of U.S. 290 and the taxiways at Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Work on the Beltway 8 work, valued at $26.8 million, wrapped up in January 2018, though the dispute over the company’s role in the crash remains. Freeman’s suit is asking for damages in excess of $1 million, common in major vehicle crashes in which negligence is alleged.

“They got paid $26 million to do this,” Bernsen said of Webber. “For months they were having problems.”

He said the lawsuit is the only remedy, not only for the family affected, but the public that relies on companies to handle road closures correctly.

“At the end of the day a father and two babies died,” he said. “That’s just sad, because it didn’t need to happen.”

dug.begley@chron.com