Family members of one of six highway workers who were killed in a crash in 2023 on Interstate 695 in Baltimore County filed a lawsuit Thursday against the contractor, alleging that it “failed on every level to ensure a safe construction zone for those working on the project.”

George Durm III, Sybil DiMaggio’s husband, and her children, Dylan DiMaggio and Nora DiMaggio, brought the suit in Baltimore County Circuit Court against Concrete General Inc., the state of Maryland and two drivers arrested and charged in the crash.

Speaking at a news conference, Michael Belsky, a partner at Schlachman, Belsky, Weiner & Davey P.A. in Baltimore, said a combination of negligent acts made the crash “utterly preventable.”

“As alleged in the complaint,” Belsky said, “it should never have been able to happen.”

On March 22, 2023, Lisa Adrienne Lea was driving a 2017 Acura TLX and tried to move into the passing lane, hitting a 2017 Volkswagen Jetta, prosecutors allege.

Five seconds before the crash, prosecutors assert, both drivers were going more than 120 mph. The speed limit is 55 mph.

Next, prosecutors reported, Lea spun out, traveled through a more than 150-foot opening in the concrete barriers that separated the work zone from the rest of the highway, overturned multiple times and fatally struck the workers.

Lea, 56, of Ednor Gardens-Lakeside, is awaiting trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court on six counts of negligent vehicular manslaughter and related offenses. She’s due in court on April 28, 2025.

The other driver, Melachi Duane Darnell Brown, 21, of Windsor Mill, pleaded guilty to six counts of negligent vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to 1 1/2 years in the Baltimore County Detention Center.

Circuit Judge Vicki Ballou-Watts later allowed Brown to serve the remainder of his punishment on home detention.

Throughout the work zones along the Baltimore Beltway, the lawsuit alleges, there had been a “large number of wall strikes and crashes from civilian vehicles.” But no additional action was taken to try to reduce them or increase safety, according to the complaint.

At one point, the lawsuit claims, a driver toppled over a sign indicating that the shoulder was closed. It was not reinstalled before the crash.

Plus, the gap in the concrete barrier was “more than enough room for a vehicle to fit onto the shoulder and inside the work zone,” the lawsuit asserts. And a truck designed to protect construction workers was parked in a spot that provided them with no protection, according to the complaint.

Sybil DiMaggio was an employee of KCI Technologies Inc. and worked on material testing. She was 46.

“We want accountability for what has happened for our loved one,” Dylan DiMaggio told reporters. “Not a day goes by that we don’t think about her. It’s difficult every single day.”

Every day since she’s lost her mother, Nora DiMaggio said, has been “kind of like a waking nightmare.”