By admin 
The widow of the driver of the van struck by an Amazon cargo plane at Miami International Airport has filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging negligence against several companies and the pilots.
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Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53, was driving a van on Sunday for the cleaning company he worked for when the Boeing 767 ran off the runway and struck his vehicle and another one, killing him and four others.
His widow, Yaraisi Santiso Morejon, who also represents Rodriguez’s estate in the lawsuit, alleges that negligence contributed to her husband’s death and that the incident was avoidable.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday morning in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, lists the defendants as Amazon.com Inc.; Amazon Air Cargo; 21 Air; Avia Acquisition; Avia Investments; Andromeda Leasing II; Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc.; Titan Aviation Leasing Limited; Joseph Carroll and Jamie Felipe Silva Molina
The incident was “a very preventable tragedy,” Mike Morgan, of Morgan & Morgan and one of Morejon’s attorneys, said at a briefing Wednesday.
21 Air, which operated the cargo plane for Amazon, and the other companies didn’t immediately respond to the lawsuit.
The suit alleges pilot error but also “a systemic failure by defendants Amazon and 21 Air to ensure adequate pilot training, fitness, and sound aeronautical decision-making.”
“We believe that this tragedy stems from a systematic chain of events going all the way up from the pilots to the owners of the airplane to the lessors of the airplane to the people that engage the lessors of the airplane,” Morgan said.
Morgan said a Herald report that documents show former 21 Air pilots had expressed concerns about safety and training procedures was “absolutely something that has played into our decision to file and our decision on who to name.”
They are looking at the past performance of the company and its predecessors, he noted.
Asked if it was premature to file a lawsuit, Morgan said no because it was important to preserve the rights of his client and preserve any evidence that appears during the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
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“There’s a habit in any type of litigation, especially when we’re talking about an airport, we’re talking about an airplane, things end up disappearing,” he said. “So being able to be there as soon as possible as this unfolded was important.”
He said they’d be able to amend the suit as new information becomes available.
But based on what they know, “we felt very confident in the fact of the negligence on the part of the pilots as well as on the owners and lessors of the airplane and their training and safety.”
The attorneys said what they’ve heard so far from the cockpit raises many questions about what was happening there. Flight data shows the pilots never engaged the plane’s reverse thrusters, according to investigators looking into the crash. “What that tells us is that there was not a lot of cohesive strategy,” said Morgan. That likely points to poor training, he said.
Sunday started off routine for Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo.
He showed up for work at 6 a.m. like he usually does, said Jorge Garcia, also a lawyer at Morgan & Morgan working on the case.
The employee was working for Professional Ocean Service Corp and cleared airplanes. He usually gets home by 3 p.m.
When he didn’t come home, his wife started to panic. She started to text him, Garcia said. But she saw his messages were unread.
Once she learned what happened, she frantically started calling hospitals.
The couple came to Miami from Cuba in 2011. Both worked multiple jobs. They have a 20-year-old son.
Rodriguez was a “very hard-working man, very loved by his wife and son,” Garcia said. “They were very private people. What they’ve gone through is unimaginable.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2026 at 12:17 PM with the headline “Van driver’s widow files lawsuit in Miami after Amazon plane crash.”
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