NEW YORK– The night Stephanie Cosme died, her sister and brother said they received a brief explanation from a U.S. Air Force official who met them at the hospital: the civilian contractor was not following protocol when she was struck by the spinning propeller. an airplane and was killed.
The family would wait eight agonizing months to learn more about how the accident played out during relatively low-risk ground testing of an MQ-9A Reaper drone at Gray Butte Airfield in California on September 7, 2023. They were certain that there was more going on. the story than Come, a 32-year-old test engineer who worked for Air Force contractor Sumaria Systems, LLC, and simply didn’t follow instructions.
A report from the US Air Force Aircraft Accident Investigation Board ultimately confirmed their instincts, finding that her trainer rushed the job and incorrectly instructed Cosme on how to read data from the drone, among other contributing factors.
But in a lawsuit filed against Sumaria last month, the family says it sees a darker explanation.
Citing witness testimony from the Air Force investigation, the family claims Come’s death was the culmination of a campaign of gender and racial discrimination by the testing director, Derek Kirkendall, who they allege had a history of hostility toward Hispanic employees at the company .
Saul Ewing, the law firm representing both the company and Kirkendall, said in a statement that “the defendants deny any wrongdoing or liability of any kind” and that they “will address the lawsuit’s allegations through the legal process in court .”
The Air Force report, released in April, did not mention racial or gender discrimination as a contributing factor to Come’s death. But the family’s attorneys, Justin Green and Debra Katz, say they are basing their allegations on witness testimony from the Air Force investigation, which shows that Kirkendall deliberately isolated Cosme on the day of her death and assigned her dangerous tasks that kept her away of the rest. of the team and failed to inform ground staff of her role. The lawsuit also says Kirkendall, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, defamed her using anti-Hispanic tropes and described her as “lazy.”
“Every night I would go to bed and look at her picture and think, ‘What happened? Are you distracted? Have you stumbled?’ said her sister, Cassaundra Cosme. “The not knowing was terrible.”
But it wasn’t much of a comfort either: “It was a relief that it wasn’t her fault, but it was devastating that it wasn’t just a terrible accident,” Cosme said.
The lawsuit also cites a hostile workplace complaint filed against Kirkendall by Cosme’s predecessor, who is not named in the filing but is also Latina, and which was dropped after she raised her concerns. Katz and Green say Kirkendall subjected Cosme, who was of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, to similar abuse, ultimately creating the unsafe conditions that led to her death.
In written testimony submitted to the Air Force investigator, a test engineer said Kirkendall told him he was “hazing” Cosme by making her stand near the aircraft in the sun for hours on end for a seemingly menial task without any way to communicate with her colleagues. the control station. The Air Force report stated that none of the ground crew knew Come’s role during the tests, or whether Kirkendall intended to have her approach the plane while the propeller was still turning.
Kirkendall’s treatment of Cosme is typical of the “way gender harassment works when women try to break into male-dominated fields. They make it much more difficult and often make them feel unsafe,” said Katz, a prominent civil rights attorney who focuses on sexual harassment and discrimination.
“Everyone knows he’s hazing her, and this is so endemic in the culture that no one tells him to stop,” Katz added. “We felt it was really important to call this suit out for what it is. This is gender discrimination that has led to someone’s death.”
In his testimony to the Air Force investigator, Kirkendall acknowledged that Cosme’s predecessor had filed a hostile environmental complaint, saying this came as a shock to him because he thought he had “an excellent rapport” with the woman. Kirkendall said Sumaria completed an investigation into her complaint and “concluded it was unfounded,” but the woman had already dropped out.
The lawsuit also alleges that two male Hispanic employees left Sumaria because of Kirkendall’s mistreatment.
The AP could not independently confirm the details of the earlier complaint against Kirkendall, or whether the two Spanish engineers also quit. Representatives for Sumaria did not answer detailed questions about the allegations against Kirkendall or the outcome of the previous complaint.
It is not clear what actions Sumaria took in response to the accident or to the findings of the Air Force investigation.
Although the findings from the Air Force Aircraft Accident Investigation Board report are public, any “safety recommendations to prevent recurrence” to the parties are made by a separate investigative board and are held privileged, said Anthony Roake, an Air Force spokesman Materiel Command, the command responsible for developing and testing the Air Force’s weapon systems.
Sumaria defended Kirkendall’s conduct on the day of the test in a detailed response to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, which conducted its own investigation into Cosme’s death and in March imposed fines totaling $38,055 for several safety violations, including the company’s failure to effectively instruct employees to maintain a safe distance from the aircraft and its spinning propeller. Like the Air Force report, the study did not mention racial or gender discrimination as a factor.
Sumaria, who is appealing the penalties, disputed that Kirkendall improperly instructed Cosme, saying she violated “all her training and direct instructions on how to approach the aircraft.”
Jennifer Mondino, director of TIME UP’s Legal Defense Fund at the National Women’s Law Center, which helps bring sexual and gender harassment cases but is not involved in Cosme’s lawsuit, said that gender harassment cases involving a deceased victim involved are not unprecedented, but they are complicated. She said proving gender discrimination can be challenging in any circumstances because it involves convincing people to speak out in a workplace culture that discourages it.
“If the affected person is no longer with us, that’s an obvious point, but it’s a significant obstacle,” Mondino said.
From the Cosme family’s perspective, no one has been held accountable for the shortcomings that led to her death just a few months before she got married. The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages.
Cosme’s family said her calm and enthusiastic demeanor was typical of her approach to building a career in a male-dominated field, starting with engineering classes in high school, where she was just one of three girls her freshman year and the only one left behind by the family. third year. She followed her father, Mario, into engineering, earning a Master of Science in Engineering/Industrial Management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
The family buried Cosme in her wedding dress, which they had adjusted so it could cover her wounds.
“We’ll never get over this. We had a perfect life. Life was great,” said Mario Cosme. “And Sumaria and Derek Kirkendall ruined a lifelong effort to do things the right way.”