By Mike Hendricks
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City won’t pay nearly $1 million to the fire truck driver who killed three people in a 2021 traffic crash in Westport.
The city council’s finance committee rejected the proposed $915,000 settlement to firefighter Dominic Biscari Tuesday after an emotional plea from the owner of the restaurant where two of the victims worked.
Calling the proposed payment “incredible,” Laura Norris said the settlement of Biscari’s legal challenge to the disciplinary actions against him “flies in the face of justice for the innocent victims.”
Committee members retired to closed session after Norris urged them to reject the settlement, and when they came back into open session Mayor Quinton Lucas said the committee had decided to do just that.
“At this point, this committee finds it not appropriate to resolve the litigation,” Lucas said. “Instead, we will hold the item off docket, which, in council parlance, largely means the ordinance is rejected, and we will then continue to hope for the best for all parties involved, but rejecting this item today.”
Had the committee endorsed the proposed settlement, it would have been up to the full council to decide whether to approve the payment, which was would have resolved two pending lawsuits. Both were connected to the Fire Department’s decision to suspend Dominic Biscari without pay and then fire him.
Later in the day, the mayor’s office issued the following written statement:
“Mayor Lucas and the committee rejected the proposed settlement. Neither the committee nor the Council has any existing plans to revisit the item. The Mayor supports all City employees but also supports accountability for the harm they commit. The proposed legislation did not do so. Mayor Lucas continues to extend his condolences to those grieving the loss of their loved ones and friends.”
Employment status
Biscari has remained on the department’s employment rolls during the course of the litigation. Immediately after the wreck, he was assigned to desk duty at fire department headquarters. Siix months after that, the city and the union agreed to let him return to full duty as a firefighter, as no charges had been filed by then, but he was prohibited from driving a fire truck.
But he has not been assigned to duty or receiving pay since he pleaded guilty in February 2023 to three counts of involuntary manslaughter. In exchange for his plea, Biscari avoided a jury trial in which he faced the possibility of being convicted on the charges and sentenced to up to 12 years in prison.
A judge instead sentenced him to three years probation and to perform 40 hours of community service.
Local 42 of the International Association of Firefighters filed a grievance to block Biscari’s termination soon after the guilty plea.
After a hearing early in 2024, an arbitrator ruled in Biscari’s favor that March. He said Biscari deserved no more than a three-day unpaid suspension as his punishment for causing the fatal crash and the arbitrator ordered the city to pay Biscari back wages and benefits. He also told the city to pay the legal costs Local 42 accrued in pursing the grievance and directed the city to wipe Biscari’s personnel record clean of any reference to the fatal wreck.
The city appealed that decision soon after. Rather than limit his decision to whether Biscari’s suspension was justified, the city alleged that the arbitrator exceeded his authority. He decided what Biscari’s punishment would be when that was not at issue in the grievance..
“He did so without any explanation of how he arrived at a three-day suspension,” the city said in its lawsuit. “But it amounted to one day for each death and one day for each million dollars that Firefighter’s fatality accident cost the City.”
The city’s appeal of the arbitrator’s ruling has been the subject of court action since then and is one of the cases that would have been settled by approval of the $915,000 settlement. Another pending case centers around a workers compensation claim filed by Biscari “for injuries” resulting from the crash. Those injuries were not specified.
Both cases will continue until they are adjudicated or a settlement is reached. Local 42 President Dan Heizman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What happened that night
Biscari was 21 at the time of the crash. According to charging documents, he was driving Pumper 19 northbound on Broadway Boulevard at full throttle as it approached Westport Road with his flashing lights and sirens on. The truck was going 51 mph, as measured by the fire truck’s vehicle data recorder, at the time of the crash on a street where the speed limit is 35 mph.
Surveillance video showed that the traffic light had been red for 16 seconds when the fire truck entered the intersection, the probable cause statement said. Biscari told police he saw a car ahead of him and slammed on the brakes, but couldn’t stop in time.
A judge in a civil case filed by the victims’ families determined that Biscari lied when he said he tried to stop and when he told police he was only driving 30 mph.
His crew was en route to a house fire at the time of the wreck, but according to the crew captain received notice moments before the crash that their assistance was no longer needed and was put back into service, according to that document.
The 20-ton, Pierce fire truck hit a Honda CR-V driven by Jennifer San Nicholas, who had the green light. At impact, the Honda carrying San Nicholas and her passenger, Michael Elwood, became lodged under the fire truck’s front bumper.
“Pumper 19 then veered off to the left, striking three parked vehicles, crushing a pedestrian, and slamming into and causing the collapse of the building located at 4050 Broadway,” the document said.
The second floor of the building collapsed on that pedestrian, Tami Knight, who had just had dinner at a restaurant with her boyfriend and was about to get into his car when the crash occurred. San Nicolas, Elwood and Knight all died at the scene. San Nicolas, 41, and Elwood, 25, worked at the restaurant Ragazza, which Norris own. Knight was a data analyst with Kansas City Public Schools. All were from Kansas City.
Seeking justice
Biscari took responsibility for his actions on the night of the crash. But in his defense, Biscari’s legal team blamed the city for not installing technology that prompts traffic lights to change and give emergency vehicles the green light when they approach.
In her prepared remarks that she delivered at Tuesday’s finance committee on behalf of herself and families of the victims, Norris said the settlement money would be better spent on preventing similar wrecks from occurring.
“Justice is what we have been working on for the past several years, since the accident,” she said.”We had hoped in the wake of this tremendous loss that something would come, something positive would come out of it, and we asked for the city to install Opticom technology and to ensure that Dominic never is behind the wheel of an emergency vehicle again.”
She said the families of the victims had bought a unit for the city to install at the site of the wreck. The fire truck had a sending unit on it, but the traffic light did not have a receiver.
“With the money spent on these settlements and attorneys fees, we could have installed Opticom technology at 100 intersections,” she said. “Make something good come out of this horrible crash. It’s the right thing to do for the families of the victims. It’s the right thing for our community.”
©2025 The Kansas City Star.
Visit kansascity.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.