A man who was run over by a Richmond fire truck as he slept outside a fire station last year has sued the city and the firefighter who was driving, arguing the crew should have seen him before pulling out on an emergency call. The lawsuit, filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court, was first reported by the Bay Area News Group on Sunday.
What happened outside Station 67
The plaintiff, Emilson Garcia-Ponce, was homeless and sleeping on the driveway of Richmond Fire Station 67, near South 12th Street and Cutting Boulevard, when a fire truck leaving for a call drove over him at about 5 a.m. in September 2025. The suit says the crash lacerated his spleen and broke his back. Court records cited by the Mercury News give the date of injury as Sept. 24, 2025; initial reports published at the time placed the crash a few days earlier in the same week.
Those first reports, from September 2025, described a man in his 30s who was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. Police said then that he was believed to be intoxicated and did not respond when the station's roll-up door opened, and that firefighters stopped the truck and tried to give him first aid before he was taken to a hospital. The fire department referred questions to Richmond police, who were investigating the crash.
What each side says
The civil complaint names the city and the truck's driver, Dillon Lissol. It alleges that Lissol and the other firefighters were required to check for obstructions before leaving the station and did not do so in time. If they had, the complaint says, they "would have easily observed" Garcia-Ponce and avoided the crash.
Richmond's attorneys dispute that. At a status conference on Thursday, they told the court Garcia-Ponce "wasn't visible" to the driver, and they have pointed out that his blood alcohol level was measured at 0.15 percent, nearly twice California's 0.08 limit for drivers. A report filed with a claim against the city says the firefighters heard a "ping" or a metallic clank, stopped the truck and did not see anyone, and that they had looked out the garage door before leaving and saw no one.
According to the Mercury News, the suit was filed in March but had not been reported until now. No trial date has been reported.
Not the first East Bay case like this
A similar crash happened in Oakland this year. On Feb. 23, 2026, a man believed to be in his 30s and unhoused was struck by an Oakland Fire Department crew cab pickup as it pulled out of Fire Station 20 at 1401 98th Ave. to respond to a structure fire. He had apparently been lying against the station's roll-up door. He was listed in critical condition and later upgraded to stable.
Both cases involved a person lying against a station's roll-up door or driveway in the moments before a crew rolled out on an emergency call. Richmond voters are separately deciding on Nov. 3 whether to approve Measure Q, a $120 million bond to repair or rebuild the city's aging fire stations. For more on the November ballot, see our Nov. 3, 2026 Bay Area election guide.