Three Workers Went to Their Jobs at a Midland Trucking Business and Did Not Come Home — What the Families Need to Know Right Now
If you are reading this page, someone you love was taken from you at a trucking business off East Highway 80 near the Interstate 20 frontage road in Midland. Three workers were fatally shot. The Midland County Sheriff’s Office is investigating. And in the days since, you have probably already heard from the employer’s insurance company, from a workers’ compensation adjuster, or from someone handing you a form to sign — all while you are trying to bury your family member and understand how this could happen in a place where people were just doing their jobs.
We are writing this page for you. Not to sell you anything, and not to pretend we know exactly what happened inside that facility — the sheriff’s investigation is still active, and the facts will come out in time. We are writing it because the decisions a family makes in the first weeks after a death like this can determine whether the truth ever comes out in a civil courtroom and whether the people who could have prevented this ever answer for it. Those decisions should not be made in the dark.
What we can tell you right now is this: workers’ compensation death benefits are likely available to the families, but they may be a fraction of what your family is actually owed. There may be a separate, third-party claim against the trucking business itself for negligent security — a claim that workers’ comp does not cover and does not control. And the evidence that decides whether that claim survives — the surveillance footage, the access-control logs, the prior incident reports, the employment records — is on a clock. Some of it can be legally destroyed within weeks. The preservation letter that freezes that evidence is the single most time-critical step, and it goes out the day you call a lawyer, not the day the criminal investigation ends.
We handle wrongful death and negligent security cases in Texas. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you — and now sits on your side of the table. We work in English and in Spanish. The consultation is free, and we do not get paid unless we win your case. That is not a slogan; it is the structure. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911, any hour, and you will reach a live person — not an answering service.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Can You Sue the Trucking Company When a Worker Is Shot at Work?
Yes — but the path depends on facts that are still developing, and on a legal distinction that the employer’s insurance company will work hard to blur.
Here is the short answer: when a worker is killed by a third party’s criminal act on the employer’s premises, two legal tracks may be available at the same time. The first is the workers’ compensation death-benefit claim — a no-fault, statutory benefit paid to surviving dependents regardless of who was at fault. The second is a third-party civil claim against the trucking business entity (and potentially others) for negligent security, premises liability, or negligent hiring and retention. Workers’ compensation does not bar the third-party claim. The two coexist, and a family that accepts workers’ comp death benefits does not waive the right to pursue the third-party case.
The longer answer is where the fight lives. A premises-liability or negligent-security claim against the business requires the family to prove that the shooting was foreseeable — that the business knew or should have known about a risk of violent crime at the facility and failed to take reasonable security measures to protect the people working there. That foreseeability question is the single most contested battleground in any negligent-security case, and it is where the evidence we discuss below — prior incidents, crime history, security deficiencies — becomes decisive.
If the shooter turns out to have been an employee of the trucking business, the legal picture shifts. The families may have a negligent hiring, retention, and supervision claim against the employer — that the business hired or kept a person with known violent propensities, a criminal history, or documented behavioral red flags, without adequate screening, intervention, or termination. That theory also supports a gross-negligence finding, which under Texas law can pierce the workers’-compensation exclusive-remedy bar and unlock exemplary (punitive) damages.
If the shooter was not an employee and the shooting appears random, the case centers on premises security — whether the business maintained adequate lighting, access control, surveillance, and perimeter security for a facility in a high-crime industrial corridor. The defense will argue that a shooting is an unforeseeable criminal act the business could not have prevented. The answer to that argument is built from the prior-incident record, the corridor’s crime profile, and the specific security failures at this facility.
Texas Wrongful Death and Survival Law: What the Families Need to Know
Texas governs this incident through its wrongful-death and survival statutes, found in Chapter 71 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Two separate causes of action arise from each death, and they belong to different plaintiffs and compensate different losses.
The wrongful-death action belongs to the surviving family — the spouse, children, and parents of the deceased worker. It compensates the family for what they lost: the financial support the worker would have provided, the household services they would have performed, the companionship and guidance they would have given, and the mental anguish and emotional loss the family suffers. The beneficiaries are defined by statute, and their order of priority matters — a surviving spouse and children have the first right to bring the claim, followed by parents, and then more distant heirs.
The survival action belongs to the estate of the deceased worker. It carries forward the claim the worker would have had if they had survived — the pre-death pain and suffering, the medical expenses incurred between injury and death, and the funeral costs. In a shooting case, the survival damages can be significant if the forensic and medical timeline shows that the worker was conscious and aware of the attack before death. That question — how long, and how aware — is one a forensic pathologist answers from the physical evidence, and it is a damages amplifier that a generalist might not think to pursue.
Both the wrongful-death and survival actions carry a two-year statute of limitations from the date of death under Texas law. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing at a funeral. It is not. Evidence degrades on a far shorter timeline, and the longer a family waits, the more of the proof disappears — not because someone destroyed it, but because the law allowed it to be destroyed and no one asked it to be saved.
Texas follows a modified comparative-negligence rule with a 51% bar. A plaintiff is barred from recovery only if found 51% or more at fault. In a third-party criminal-act case, the workers’ own fault is typically minimal — they were at work, doing their jobs. But the defense will attempt to allocate fault to the shooter as a responsible third party, which can reduce the families’ recovery by the percentage assigned to the shooter. That allocation fight is why naming every defendant who contributed to the conditions that made the shooting possible — not just the shooter — is structurally important.
Texas does not impose a statutory cap on non-economic damages in premises-liability or negligent-security cases. Unlike its medical-malpractice regime, where non-economic damages are capped, a family pursuing a negligent-security claim can recover the full value of mental anguish, loss of companionship, and emotional harm without a statutory ceiling. That is a significant advantage in a wrongful-death case, and it is one of the reasons why the third-party track can be worth far more than workers’ comp alone.
Exemplary (punitive) damages are available in Texas if gross negligence or malicious intent is established against the employer or premises entity. Texas does cap exemplary damages through a statutory formula tied to the amount of economic and non-economic damages recovered, but the cap does not apply to the economic damages themselves — the lost earning capacity, the lost household services, the medical and funeral costs. Those flow in full.
The Defendant Stack: Who Is Actually Responsible
A negligent-security case is rarely about one defendant. The conditions that allowed a shooting to happen at a trucking facility were created by a stack of entities, each with a different role and a different insurance posture. Identifying every layer is the first critical discovery target, because naming the wrong entity — or missing the one with the real money — can shrink a case to nothing.
The trucking business operating entity is the primary defendant. This is the company that employed the workers, controlled the premises, and owed them the duty of reasonable care. But the specific operating entity is not identified in the available reporting, and many Midland-area trucking operations are structured through layered LLCs — a thin operating company, a separate property-holding entity, and sometimes a parent company or holding group. The first task is to identify the exact legal entity that operates the facility, holds the lease, and controls the premises. If the trucking business is a registered interstate motor carrier, its DOT number, safety rating, and company safety-management practices — including workplace-violence policies and facility-security protocols — are discoverable through FMCSA records.
The property owner or landlord, if different from the operating entity, may carry separate premises-liability exposure. The landlord is responsible for the security infrastructure — the fencing, the lighting, the gates, the structural access controls — while the operating tenant is responsible for day-to-day security practices. In some cases, the lease allocates these duties between landlord and tenant, and that allocation is a discovery target.
A third-party security contractor, if one existed, may be liable for negligent performance of security duties — failure to patrol, monitor, or respond. If the facility contracted with a security company, that company’s contractual duties, patrol schedules, and incident-response records are discoverable. If no security contractor existed, the absence of one is itself evidence of a security failure.
The shooter is the direct tortfeasor for the intentional killings. The shooter is likely uncollectible individually, but naming the shooter in the lawsuit preserves joint-and-several-liability theories and establishes the criminal act that triggers the premises-duty analysis. Under Texas’s comparative-responsibility framework, the shooter will be submitted to the jury as a responsible third party, and the percentage of fault assigned to the shooter reduces the families’ recovery from the other defendants. That is why building the foreseeability case against the business is so important — the stronger the case that the business’s own failures contributed to the shooting, the less fault flows to the shooter and the more recovery flows to the families.
The workers’ compensation carrier has a statutory obligation to pay death benefits, but it may also have a subrogation interest in any third-party recovery. That subrogation interest must be managed carefully — the families should not resolve a third-party claim without understanding how the workers’ comp carrier’s reimbursement right will be treated, and an experienced attorney can often negotiate a reduction of the subrogation lien as part of the global resolution.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook: What They Will Do to the Families
The employer’s insurance company and its adjusters have a playbook for exactly this situation, and the families need to recognize each play before it runs. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm, and he knows these plays from the inside — not because someone told him about them, but because he was in the rooms where they were designed.
Play 1: The “just checking in” recorded-statement call. Within days, someone friendly will call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened” — on a recording built to be quoted against you later. The voice is warm. The purpose is not. Every word you say is being transcribed and analyzed for anything that can be used to reduce the value of your claim or to create a statement that conflicts with a later, more complete recollection. The counter is simple: do not give a recorded statement to the employer’s insurance company or any adjuster without counsel. You are not required to, and nothing you say will increase the value of your claim — it can only decrease it.
Play 2: The fast settlement check with a release buried under it. A check may arrive fast — sometimes before the funeral — with a release form that, if signed, waives the family’s right to pursue a third-party claim worth substantially more. The workers’ comp death benefit may be presented as “the settlement” when it is only one track of recovery. The counter: never sign any document from the employer, its insurer, or its lawyer without having an attorney review it first. A release signed in grief cannot be easily undone, and the employer’s insurance company knows that the worst time for a family to make a legal decision is the week they are burying someone.
Play 3: The “workers’ comp is all you get” framing. The adjuster may tell the family that workers’ compensation is the only benefit available and that the family cannot sue the employer. That is true only in the narrowest sense — if the employer carried workers’ comp and the gross-negligence exception does not apply, the exclusive-remedy bar may limit the direct claim against the employer. But it does not bar the third-party negligent-security claim, the claim against a property owner, the claim against a security contractor, or — if the employer was a non-subscriber — the full common-law negligence action. The counter is knowing which fork you are on, and the first question we answer when a family calls is whether the employer carried workers’ comp at all.
Play 4: Social-media monitoring. The insurance company’s investigators will monitor the families’ social media accounts for anything that can be taken out of context — a photograph at a family gathering captioned as “moving on,” a post expressing anger at the shooter interpreted as proof the family blames the shooter and not the business, a timeline of public statements that conflicts with a later deposition answer. The counter: do not discuss the incident, the shooter, or your loved one’s employment on social media or with media outlets. Statements can be harvested by defense counsel and used to undermine claims. This is not paranoia; it is documented industry practice.
Play 5: The “random, unforeseeable act” defense. The employer’s lawyers will frame the shooting as a freak, unpredictable event no business could have foreseen — and they will begin building that narrative from day one. The counter is built from the foreseeability evidence: the prior-incident record, the corridor’s crime profile, the security deficiencies, and the industry standards the business failed to meet. That counter does not build itself, and it cannot be built after the evidence is gone.
What a Case Like This Is Worth: The Damages Picture
Three wrongful deaths at a Texas trucking business generate significant aggregate exposure, but the value range is exceptionally wide because it hinges on the foreseeability battleground. No honest attorney can give a family a specific dollar figure without knowing the facts that discovery will reveal — but we can describe the framework and the range honestly.
Economic damages are the objectively calculable losses: lost earning capacity, lost household services, funeral and burial expenses, and medical costs incurred between injury and death. The Permian Basin’s oilfield and trucking workforce earns significantly above national averages — oilfield haulers, equipment operators, and logistics workers in this region can earn well into five and six figures, and that elevated earning capacity drives the lost-earning-capacity calculation. A forensic economist projects the worker’s expected remaining worklife — not just years to retirement, but the actual expected labor-force participation years for a person of their age, education, and occupation — and reduces the lost earnings to present value. Fringe benefits — health insurance, retirement contributions, paid leave — add roughly 30% on top of wages, per federal labor-cost data, and those vanish with the job too. Lost household services — the childcare, cooking, repairs, driving, and household management the worker performed — are valued by the replacement-cost method, asking what it would cost to hire out those tasks at market rates.
Non-economic damages are the human losses with no receipt: mental anguish, loss of companionship, loss of guidance, loss of the marital or parent-child relationship, and the emotional harm the family suffers. Texas does not cap non-economic damages in premises-liability or negligent-security cases. This is a significant advantage over Texas’s medical-malpractice regime, where non-economic damages are capped, and it means the full value of the human loss is recoverable.
Survival damages capture the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering — the conscious awareness of the attack, the terror, and the physical pain before death. In a shooting case, this is a damages amplifier if the forensic timeline supports it, and it flows to the estate’s beneficiaries.
Punitive (exemplary) damages are available if gross negligence or malicious intent is established against the employer or premises entity. Texas caps exemplary damages through a statutory formula tied to the amount of economic and non-economic damages, but the cap does not touch the economic damages themselves. Prior threats, known dangerous-propensity employees, or ignored security recommendations are the aggravators that drive the punitive claim, and they are the facts that discovery is designed to find.
The case-value range runs from approximately $3,000,000 on the low end to $30,000,000 or more on the high end, depending on the foreseeability evidence. If discovery reveals prior threats, workplace-violence incidents, or known security deficiencies that the business ignored, each death could command $5,000,000 to $10,000,000 or more in combined economic and non-economic damages, with punitive exposure on top. If the shooting appears random and unforeseeable with adequate security measures in place, the liability challenge is severe and value drops substantially. The Permian Basin workforce’s high earning capacity elevates economic damages across the board, and the gross-negligence and non-subscriber variables could either unlock or foreclose the deepest recovery channel.
Collectibility depends on the business’s insurance limits, asset base, and whether a third-party security contractor or property owner adds coverage layers. Identifying the coverage tower — which policies exist, in what order they pay, and at what limits — is the first financial discovery target.
The First 72 Hours: What Families Should and Should Not Do
Do not sign anything. Documents from the employer, the workers’ compensation carrier, or any insurance company should not be signed without review by an attorney. A release signed in the first days after a death can waive rights worth substantially more than whatever is being offered — and what is being offered in the first 72 hours is almost always a fraction of the claim’s true value.
Do not give a recorded statement. The adjuster’s call will come — maybe it already has. The voice is sympathetic. The recording is not. Every word is being preserved for use against the family later. Decline politely. Say that you are not ready to discuss the incident and that you will have your attorney contact them. That is not adversarial; it is protective.
Do not post on social media. Do not discuss the incident, the shooter, your loved one’s employment, or your feelings about what happened on any social media platform. Do not respond to media requests without counsel. Statements made in grief can be harvested by defense counsel and used to undermine claims. This is not speculation; it is documented industry practice.
Do get the workers’ compensation information. Ask the employer whether it carried workers’ compensation insurance. Get the name of the carrier and the claim number. That information determines which fork the family is on and shapes the entire legal strategy.
Do preserve everything you have. Photographs your loved one took at the facility. Text messages about work conditions. Pay stubs. Employment paperwork. Any correspondence with the employer. These are the family’s own copies of records that may become evidence, and they should be preserved in their original form.
Do call a lawyer. Not next month. Not after the funeral. Not after the criminal case concludes. The preservation letter that freezes the surveillance footage and the employment records has to go out while that evidence still exists, and the security expert’s inspection has to happen before the premises are altered. The civil case and the criminal investigation run on parallel tracks, and the families do not have to wait for one to finish before the other begins. The call is free. The consultation is free. And we are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at 1-888-ATTY-911.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the trucking company if my loved one was shot at work?
Yes, potentially. Workers’ compensation death benefits may be available, but they are likely not the full measure of your recovery rights. A third-party claim against the trucking business for negligent security or premises liability may be available alongside the workers’ comp claim, and the two coexist — accepting workers’ comp benefits does not waive the third-party claim. If the shooter was an employee, a negligent hiring or retention claim may also be available, and a gross-negligence finding can unlock exemplary damages even if the employer carried workers’ comp.
Is workers’ compensation the only benefit available to the families?
No. Workers’ compensation death benefits are one track of recovery, and they are capped by a statutory schedule. A third-party civil claim — for negligent security, premises liability, or negligent hiring — can recover the full measure of economic and non-economic damages, including lost earning capacity, lost household services, mental anguish, and loss of companionship. In Texas, non-economic damages are not capped in premises-liability or negligent-security cases. If the employer was a non-subscriber to workers’ comp, the family may pursue a full common-law negligence action against the employer directly.
What if the shooter was another employee of the trucking business?
If the shooter was an employee, the families may have a negligent hiring, retention, and supervision claim against the employer — that the business hired or kept a person with known violent propensities, a criminal history, or documented behavioral red flags. That theory also supports a gross-negligence finding, which under Texas law can pierce the workers’-compensation exclusive-remedy bar and allow the families to pursue exemplary (punitive) damages against the employer directly. The entity’s hiring practices, background-check procedures, disciplinary history, and any prior workplace-violence complaints become the core discovery targets.
How long do the families have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Texas law gives the families two years from the date of death to file both the wrongful-death action and the survival action. That sounds like a long time, but it is not — the evidence that decides the case is on a much shorter destruction schedule. Surveillance footage can be overwritten in 30 to 90 days. Access-control logs can be auto-purged on short cycles. The physical premises can be repaired and altered within days. The two-year deadline is the outer limit, but the practical deadline for preserving evidence is measured in weeks, not years.
What damages are available in a workplace shooting death?
Each of the three deaths generates a full wrongful-death and survival damages profile. Economic damages include lost earning capacity — potentially significant given Permian Basin wage levels — plus lost household services, funeral and burial expenses, and medical costs. Non-economic damages include mental anguish and loss of companionship for surviving spouses, children, and parents, with no statutory cap in this claim type under Texas law. Survival damages capture the decedent’s pre-death pain and suffering, which in a shooting may include conscious awareness of the attack. Punitive damages are available if gross negligence is established, subject to Texas’s statutory cap framework. The aggregate range for three deaths can run from approximately $3,000,000 to $30,000,000 or more, depending on the foreseeability evidence.
Is a random shooting the business’s fault?
That depends on whether the shooting was foreseeable — and foreseeability is the central battleground in any negligent-security case. If the business had prior incidents of violence, threats, or criminal activity at the facility, or if the surrounding corridor had a documented pattern of violent crime, the business was on notice that its workers faced a foreseeable risk. If the business failed to maintain reasonable security measures — adequate lighting, functional surveillance, access controls, perimeter fencing, security personnel — it may be liable for failing to protect its workers from a danger it knew or should have known about. If the shooting was truly random and unforeseeable and the business maintained adequate security, the liability challenge is severe. The foreseeability question is answered by the evidence — and the evidence is on a clock.
What evidence needs to be preserved immediately?
The most urgent items are surveillance camera footage from the facility and neighboring businesses (which can be overwritten within 30 to 90 days), employment records of all workers and the suspect if confirmed as an employee, security policies and prior risk assessments (which can be revised post-incident), prior incident reports and 911 records for the business address (the foreseeability engine), access-control logs and gate records (which can be auto-purged), cell phone records (typically retained 90 to 180 days by carriers), and the physical crime scene itself (which the facility may repair or alter within days). A preservation letter demanding that all of this evidence be frozen is the single most time-critical step, and it goes out the day a family calls a lawyer.
Should I sign documents from the employer or its insurer?
No — not without an attorney reviewing them first. Documents presented in the first days after a death — including workers’ compensation paperwork, acknowledgment forms, or settlement offers — can contain releases that waive the family’s right to pursue a third-party claim worth substantially more. The workers’ comp death benefit may be presented as “the settlement” when it is only one track of recovery. A release signed in grief cannot be easily undone, and the employer’s insurance company knows that the worst time for a family to make a legal decision is the week they are burying someone.
Can I post about this on social media?
No. Do not discuss the incident, the shooter, your loved one’s employment, or your feelings about what happened on any social media platform. The insurance company’s investigators will monitor the families’ social media accounts for anything that can be taken out of context and used to undermine claims. A photograph at a family gathering, a post expressing anger, a timeline of public statements — all of these can be harvested by defense counsel. This is not paranoia; it is documented industry practice. If media outlets contact you, decline to comment and direct them to your attorney.
What is the difference between a wrongful-death claim and a survival action?
A wrongful-death claim belongs to the surviving family — the spouse, children, and parents — and compensates them for what they lost: financial support, household services, companionship, and the emotional harm of the loss. A survival action belongs to the estate of the deceased worker and carries forward the claim the worker would have had if they had survived — pre-death pain and suffering, medical expenses, and funeral costs. Both arise from the same death, but they compensate different losses and belong to different plaintiffs. Both carry a two-year statute of limitations from the date of death.
How much does it cost to hire a lawyer for this?
Nothing up front. We work on a contingency fee — 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free, and we are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You will never receive a bill from us while your case is pending. If there is no recovery, there is no fee. That is the structure, and it means that every family — regardless of financial circumstances — has access to the same quality of legal representation.
The Call You Need to Make
The evidence at that trucking facility off Highway 80 is dying on a schedule. The surveillance footage is overwriting itself. The employment records can be altered. The physical premises can be repaired. The workers’ compensation adjuster is building a file designed to minimize what your family receives. And the two-year clock is already running.
You do not have to know the answers before you call. You do not have to have decided anything. You do not have to be ready to file a lawsuit. You just have to call — and let us send the letter that freezes the evidence, ask the questions that identify the right defendants, and tell you honestly whether you have a case and what it is worth.
The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And we are available right now, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
1-888-ATTY-911.
That is 1-888-288-9911. A live person answers — not a machine, not an answering service. If your family was affected by the shooting at the Midland trucking business, call us now. The preservation letter goes out the day you call, not the day the criminal investigation ends — because the evidence will not wait, and neither should you.