You drive past them often.
Process on the side of a highway.
But have you ever wondered
about the stories behind them?
Pero no one family just
walking down the road.
It's June 12th, 1:45 in the morning.
All right. Listen somebody out there
on I-20 near exit 503 in Terrell.
Voice is here.
I just ended up hitting a deer
or something. Wasn't a deer.
It was Jonathan Hearn.
An Amazon driver?
And Alicia Harmon's brother.
Absolute worst day of my life.
It's resulted as. My
brother's life is just now across on
the side of the road that people pass.
But it's crazy
like that's just how the story ends, you
know? But the story begins 15 hours earlier.
It's 10:01 AM on June 11th,
30 year old Jonathan Hearn clocks in
at this Amazon facility and hits the
road with a truck full of packages.
Like most Amazon drivers,
he doesn't actually work
for Amazon. His employer is a third
party delivery company called Triumph
Logistics. From the moment that
my brother got on the road
that day, there were red flags
going. 12:13 PM Jonathan is pulled
over for what will become the first
of several times. He stopped that day.
We had a couple of complaints on
your driving. OK. What the officer
didn't know was Jonathan had gone
days without his PTSD
medication and was having
a mental episode.
Call sheet that I made contact
with you and that you're not
intoxicated. Since he appears sober, he's
sent on his way.
Everybody OK? Yeah,
imagine a little shook up.
About an hour later, police body
camera shows Jonathan drives his
Amazon van through a customers yard,
eventually getting stuck in
the woods behind her house.
The homeowner calls the cops.
I don't know where to start.
I've been doing this a long time and
this just doesn't make any sense at all.
Dumbfounded the center officers
calling a state trooper to
give Jonathan a sobriety test.
Your sentences are coherent.
Your nurse tumbling?
I don't smell anything.
The story is kind of disturbing.
They have PTSD or something.
I do have PTSD,
but it's never been an issue.
I think you should take the rest of
the day off and talk to your employer.
Still concerned about a
safety, the state trooper
follows Jonathan while in route
his dashcam captures this video of
Jonathan's van swerving off the road.
There is no penalty does
not affect your record. The
trooper pulls him over and issues
Jonathan a warning for failure
to drive in a single lane and
refers his license to the state's
mental Advisory Board for review.
Writing Jonathan is suffering from
PTSD and possible lack of medications.
Forney, TX next he calls Jonathan
supervisor at Trump Logistics
to tell him that Jonathan is
unsafe to drive and ask someone
to come pick him up. All right.
4:25 PM Jonathan Supervisors arrived
to take custody of him and the van.
About an hour later,
they returned to the Amazon facility.
Internal records show they
don't send Jonathan home.
They sign him in
under another driver's name. They
put him back on the road
to continue his route, delivering
packages across north and East Texas.
I can't believe that anybody
would even do that, they didn't.
They didn't care. Why
do you think that they
didn't take him off the road?
Because they needed the packages delivered.
Back on the road, Jonathan's
unusual behavior continues.
He fails to deliver most of his packages.
Instead, photo show he opens
them and fills them with trash.
In just look at his communications with
his supervisors at Triumph Logistics,
they look like gibberish.
Amongst each other,
his supervisors write.
This is bizarre behavior and I'm
wondering if the cop was right.
8:25 PM Jonathan returns
to the Amazon facility.
He gets in his personal vehicle
and drives aimlessly for hours
until its truck runs out of gas along I-20.
He sees a gas station across the highway
and decides to make a run for it.
1:45 AM Jonathan
is hit and killed.
We were best friends.
I miss every single thing
about him every single day.
There is extreme negligence that they didn't
get him off the road and get him help.
Shelby caulking is a former
dispatcher for triumph logistics.
She says Amazon's delivery service partners,
called DSPS like Triumph,
often manipulate Amazon system by
checking in drivers who are unfit
to drive under other drivers names.
The DSPS do it,
she says to keep their drivers on
the road longer than Amazon allows,
increasing the number of packages
delivered and increasing the
amount the DSP gets paid. I've
been seeing it happen more and more.
Yes, it does happen a lot.
Another former Triumph Logistics
employee told us the same thing
since she still works in the
industry and fears retaliation.
We agreed to hide her identity
and change her voice. The reason
why I want to speak out is because
I myself was placed in position
to drive when I shouldn't have.
I only had one eye that was operating
and they still put me behind the wheel.
A driver that's out on the road when they
should not be could kill somebody easy.
John Trapani is the owner of Triumph
Logistics and Jonathan's boss.
He declined to answer our questions.
Amazon told us they were unaware
of this issue until we called.
They sent a statement saying we are
working with our delivery service partner
triumph logistics to fully investigate
the allegations and will take any
appropriate action once that's complete.
If somebody just took the time to care.
And intervene that day instead of everything,
continuing and ***********.
If the bosses had done the right
thing and taking him off the
road and not put him back out.
There's no telling that could be a
different outcome than having to visit
a side marker on the side of the road.
In Dallas I'm Charlotte Huffman.