A 2006 fatal crash involving a 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee and another four-year-old child burned to death, Cassidy Jarmon, is pictured in Cleburne, Texas.
Older Jeeps with fuel tanks located behind the rear axle might lead to explosive testimony in case against Chrysler starting trial in Georgia. This month, a family whose four-year-old son burned to death in the back of a 1999 Grand Cherokee is starting trial against the automaker—and unlike most large companies facing wrongful-death claims, Chrysler is refusing to settle.
Bryan and Lindsay Walden of Bainbridge, Georgia, brought the suit against Chrysler in July 2012, four months after their son, Remington, was killed when a 1997 Dodge Dakota rear-ended the ’99 Grand Cherokee in which he was riding. According to Automotive News, the boy only suffered a broken leg from the impact but “died screaming in a fire so intense his chest fused to the Jeep’s door” as he tried to escape his booster seat. He may have been alive for an entire minute while engulfed in flames.
As heart-wrenching as this account is, the Waldens aren’t alone. There are more than 70 fire-related deaths from rear-end collisions in older Grand Cherokees and Libertys, according to the Detroit News. Safety advocates like Jenelle Embrey—who claimed to witness a mother and teen burn to death in a Grand Cherokee and later sent an online petition with 128,000 signatures to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2013—say there are hundreds more.
Embrey’s petition led to a NHTSA investigation that found higher-than-average fatality rates among 1993-1998 Grand Cherokee and 2002-2007 Liberty models. Chrysler contends that these are high-speed, high-energy collisions, that the Jeeps are no less safe than their contemporaries, and that they met all safety standards of the time.
In June 2013, after initially refusing a NHTSA recall request, Chrysler did recall 1.56 million of those Jeeps and sent letters to another 710,000 owners of later, 1999-2004 Grand Cherokees as a “customer service campaign,” advising them to bring in their vehicles to have tow hitches installed.
