Family of fatal accident victim calls for child-support law

It has been two years and two months since Shemaiah Grant was killed in a collision a couple of miles away from his West Bay home, after being struck while riding his motorcycle by Jordan Telford, who was texting and driving at the time.

Since then, Grant’s family have struggled with the devastating emotional toll his death has caused, as well as an ever-growing financial burden.

“We have incurred more than $39,000 in medical bills and other expenses that just keep on increasing,” said Cherry Chin, Grant’s mother. “His children are still young and so those bills will continue to grow with them.”

Because Telford was driving without insurance, the family has no recourse for help with shouldering the medical costs, nor for helping to pay for the upbringing of Grant’s four children – aged 14 and younger.

Telford was sentenced to four years and seven months in prison, along with a lengthy driving disqualification upon his release.

Leading up to the sentencing, Chin and the rest of her family pleaded with the courts to impose a financial penalty on Telford with the hopes of recovering the hospital bills and reining in other expenses.

However, Justice Cheryll Richards declined to impose that order, noting that at the time of sentencing, Telford was unemployed and without the means to pay such sums.

“This is why we are calling for a maintenance law in Cayman, that would force persons convicted of killing other people, to pay towards the upbringing and expenses of the victim’s children and/or expenses caused by their deaths,” explained Grant’s sister, Leah Grant.

Such legislation would mimic the US state of Tennessee’s Ethan’s, Hailey’s, and Bentley’s Law – which requires drunk drivers to pay child support to the families of the people they kill, up until the child turns 18 or graduates from high school.

That law, which has since been dubbed the ‘DUI child support law’, was passed in Tennessee in July last year and came into effect in January.

Although Telford had been drinking before the fatal collision, a blood alcohol test recorded a reading of 0.07%, which was below the then-legal limit of 0.100%.

For that reason, Telford was not charged with driving under the influence. Nonetheless, Grant’s family believes the spirit of the law would still be applicable.

“If you choose to speed, if you choose to drive recklessly, if you choose to drink and drive, or text and drive, and in that process kill someone, you shouldn’t then not be held accountable for your actions by saying, ‘Oh, I don’t have a job’, or ‘Oh, I don’t have insurance’,” said Leah Grant.

But the process of getting such a law passed, or even drafted, is proving to be difficult. And even if this kind of legislation were enacted locally, it would be unlikely to be retroactive, so would not be applied to the Grant case.

Grant’s family say they first approached the government with the request for the law in mid-2022 and, one year later, no such bill has been brought to the House, nor has a draft bill been prepared.

“This law would help so many other people who have found themselves in similar positions,” explained Leah Grant. “We know of another family who had to pay for the structural damage to another person’s house and bury their loved one, all because the driver didn’t have a licence and was not covered by insurance at the time of the death.”

For now, it’s not clear if or when such a law will be brought into effect.