Lawsuit Over Amazon Crash That Injured High School Baseball Player
A Northwest Indiana family is suing Amazon after their teenage son was critically injured in a crash.
The school bus Lucas Bradshaw was riding in with his high school baseball teammates in La Porte County, Indiana in May, 2025 was struck by a truck driven by an Amazon driver leaving Lucas, who was 16 at the time, with catastrophic injuries that he's still recovering from.
He spent some time in a coma.
The driver, Shawn Akison, was under the influence of fentanyl and checking the Amazon App right before the crash and was sentenced to prison.
The lawsuit alleges Amazon approved and continued to authorize Akison, of Romeoville, Illinois to haul its freight despite nearly 20 years of driving violations, multiple driver's license suspensions and an arrest for felony heroin possession while driving for Amazon just four months before the crash.
Scott Lane is a lawyer with the Chicago firm Lane Brown which held a news conference in downtown Chicago on Thursday morning. Lane says Amazon holds Akison was technically not working for them because he was a relay driver, hauling freight for Amazon saying, "This is a game that Amazon has been playing for years, it's a game that they're playing across the entire country and the game has to stop. They need to be held accountable and change has to be made."
Lucas' father, Brad Bradshaw, is one of his son's baseball coaches and was driving the bus that day. He said, "we're just trying to get Lucas back to his normal self."
Kelley Bradshaw is Lucas Bradshaw's mother and sat next to her husband on Thursday saying, with emotion in her voice, that Lucas "has a laundry list of things he wants to to do. He would like to play baseball again. I don't foresee that happening as a parent but he has a goal so if we can help him with we're going to."
The Bradshaw family has a farm and Mrs. Bradshaw said Lucas "wants to farm when he graduates, that's been in his blood since he was born. Things on the farm have changed some...but we're trying to make that work as well."
An Amazon spokesperson released a statement to WBBM which said, “This was a tragedy, and our hearts are with the families affected as they recover and the entire LaPorte County community. Given this is active litigation, we have no further comment.”
