By Amanda Garrett
Akron Beacon Journal
CANTON, Ohio — Canton firefighter Tonya Johnson intentionally killed herself when she stepped into rush-hour traffic on state Route 8 on Feb. 22, 2016.
Suicide was the ruling of the Summit County Medical Examiner in the months after Johnson’s death, and a judge Tuesday declined to overturn that conclusion.
Johnson’s family is devastated and still doesn’t buy it, their attorneys said Tuesday.
“They were just dumbfounded,” said David DuPlain, who with co-counsel Danielle Pierce represents Johnson’s three children. “You can expect an appeal.”
Johnson’s children went to court last year hoping a judge would overturn suicide as their mother’s manner of death after they showed all the reasons she wouldn’t take her own life.
At stake was $3 million Guardian Life Insurance declined to pay out because Johnson’s policy included a clause that prohibited payment for a suicide that occurred during the first two years of the policy. The insurer did, however, pay out $2 million in a separate, older policy.
Summit County Common Pleas Judge Amy Corrigall Jones on Tuesday wrote that she was not “unsympathetic” to the family’s position. But in a 16-page order filed Thursday afternoon, she declined to intervene.
“While the plaintiffs have produced extensive testimonial evidence as to Tonya Johnson’s reputation, personal relations with family and friends, spirituality, core beliefs, work ethic, business acumen, love for her children, determination, generosity, etc.,” the judge wrote, “they have produced very little competent evidence to counter that produced by [the medical examiner].”
In her ruling, Corrigall Jones outlined some of the highlights from the law, testimony and arguments presented in the case, including:
- While Johnson, 43, had a “keen business acumen,” she also owed money to the IRS, multiple vehicle leases and had established an ongoing pattern of insufficient fund charges against her bank account.
- Johnson could be “very private, somewhat quixotic, and at times, a rash individual.” Some of her closest friends didn’t learn she was getting married until the day of her wedding, about 11 days before her death. Johnson walked into traffic as she and her new husband filed for a dissolution. Attorneys said she had discovered he had cheated on her.
- Drivers on Route 8 that day cited Johnson’s bizarre behavior going in and out of traffic, and authorities noted that she could have avoided crossing heavy traffic but, after hesitating, headed into it.
Corrigall Jones also pointed out in her ruling that, under Ohio law, a judge is “prohibited from stepping into the shoes of the medical examiner” and is required to afford “much weight” to a medical examiner’s conclusions.
That, attorneys for Johnson’s family said Tuesday, is not entirely true.
The Supreme Court has said the burden of proof is on the plaintiff when it comes to overturning anything medical in a medical examiner’s report, DuPlain said. But that burden shifts to the medical examiner when a plaintiff challenges nonmedical things in a ruling, including many of the events and circumstances that could help determine if someone killed themselves.
DuPlain also took issue with the judge’s ruling for including information from Johnson’s new husband about mental illness. Johnson’s husband told investigators that Johnson recently stopped taking medication for bipolar disorder.
The order also pointed out that authorities found no evidence to support this allegation in medical records.
The judge raised other seemingly contradictory information in her order, too.
In one instance, the order points out that Johnson and her family watched a movie that focused on suicide a couple of months before her death. In the middle of the movie, Johnson’s family said she stood up and said they better look into it if anyone ever claims she killed herself.
“Don’t let this story be a story that people tell about me ever,” Johnson’s family quoted her as saying.
At the same time, within an hour of being struck on Route 8, the order said Johnson texted her sister with a message that read “I ain’t never going to forget you.”
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