NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV/Gray News) – Text messages between an Impact Plastics supervisor and his daughter show workers were still at the plant long after flood warnings were issued. A complaint was filed on behalf of Johnny Peterson’s family.

According to their lawyers, Peterson was one of six Impact Plastics employees killed after flooding from Hurricane Helene hit the plant. Texts between him and his daughter that morning detail the final moments before he was taken away.

Peterson texted a video of the flooded parking lot to his daughter Alexa. It was taken at 10:44 a.m. on Friday, September 27. It was an hour and a half after the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the area, ordering people to immediately move to higher ground. “He said at that time they better close the factory, but they didn’t,” Alexa said.

Then Peterson texted him a photo of the flooded break room inside the facility. Later texts from him said:

“I can’t go out.”

“That’s bad Lexie.”

“I love you all.”

Alexa asked her father to answer her calls. In his last text at 1:30 p.m., he replied: “I can’t.”

“This all sounds like a fever dream,” Alexa said. “It doesn’t look like he’s really dead. It doesn’t look like this flood actually hit.

Alexa wants to know why upper management wouldn’t have let the workers leave at the first sign of trouble. A new lawsuit filed this week alleges it all came down to business. “We understand from witnesses that the company was behind on some of its orders,” said attorney Alex Little, who is representing the family. “There were pieces they had to go out the door on.”

Few claims Impact Plastics and its owner, Gerald O’Connor, put lives at risk to meet deadlines. Little also alleges that although Impact Plastics was in a flood plain, no evacuation plan was in place.

“If you can’t keep your workers safe in the middle of a disaster, no matter how big the company is, you have no business running a factory like that,” Little said.

WSMV4 Investigates also obtained screenshots of emails sent by members of management that week. An email was sent two days before the flooding on Wednesday September 25. It came from Impact Plastics CFO Susan Chambers. He asked employees to turn off their computers when they left Friday because “the power will be out over the weekend.” Little thinks this shows the company was aware of the impending severe weather. Little said management asked the workers to come in Friday anyway, and management wouldn’t have let them leave in time to escape the flooding.

The lawsuit alleges that workers repeatedly asked to leave throughout the morning, but were not allowed to do so.

“At 11:35 a.m., while his employees were trapped and fearing for their lives, Defendant O’Connor and other senior executives had sneaked out of the building through the back door after retrieving certain business documents from their own private offices ” the lawsuit states. .

A screenshot of a second email we obtained was sent at 9:28 a.m. on the day of the flood to reschedule a meeting for 1:00 p.m. that day. The email was sent 14 minutes after the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the area. The suit alleges that senior management, including O’Connor, was aware of the alerts but failed to evacuate employees.

“Everyone was expected to still be at work at that time (1 p.m.),” the lawsuit states.

“The anger that I have… There’s not a lot of room for grief,” Alexa said. “I have a feeling that will come later.”

WSMV4 contacted the attorneys representing Impact Plastics and O’Connor. We did not receive a response.

Copyright 2024 WSMV via Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved.