But Stephanie Laurin’s happy life with Ackerman suddenly and tragically ended when an employee, Omar Thorton, calmly shot and killed eight co-workers, including Ackerman, at Hartford Distributors last August 3rd.  After killing eight men, he called 911 and told a state trooper that rampant racism amongst his co-workers had forced his hand and that he wished he "coulda got more."

Stephanie Laurin has now applied for Ackerman's workers' compensation death benefits. A lawyer for Hartford Distributors and its insurance company has filed documents with the state Workers' Compensation Commission, stating the law is clear: Laurin can't claim the benefits because she is not a family member.

Laurin told The Hartford Courant publication that she feels she qualifies for Ackerman’s benefits because she was his "dependent."

Legal experts say the case is likely to end up in the state Supreme Court.

Police are now concluding their investigation into the August 3rd 2010 slayings, and into the allegations by Omar Thornton that he committed his egregious act because of racism at the company.  Some members of Thornton's family had said that he had shown them cell phone pictures of racist graffiti in the bathroom at the warehouse. The phone was turned over to the state police forensic lab for analysis and no such images were found, sources said.

Sources say a forensic examination of Thornton's cell phone overall found no evidence to back Thornton's claims of racism. There also was no evidence to support similar claims of racism voiced by Thornton's family or girlfriend, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

 The investigation is supposed to be wrapped up soon and a final report released to the public after it is shared with the families of the eight victims. Sources said it will take more than eight months to complete because police are waiting for the forensic analysis of Thornton's phone to be completed.

"We always felt that would be the finding. We've always been very much against racism, or any kind of prejudice. We don't condone it, and anybody that works at our company, if there were any acts of prejudice, they would be taken very seriously,'' said Ross Hollander, CEO of Hartford Distributors Inc.

"Can I possibly say to you that with 130 people living in a business together that there aren't people who are prejudiced?”  Hollander said further.  “No one can say that. But I can tell you that it's not condoned by my family, my father before me or the Stack family [which owned Franklin Distributors, which has merged with Hartford Distributors].”
Omar Thornton opened fire only seconds after he was terminated in a termination meeting in a corner office at Hartford Distributors. Company officials confronted Thornton with surveillance video showing him twice removing cases of beer from his delivery truck and placing them in a private vehicle.

Thornton commented on the high quality of the video, conferred briefly with his union representative, Bryan Cirigliano, and then signed a one-line resignation letter, union officials have said.

He then pulled out a gun and started shooting. Hartford Distributors, Inc. Executive Vice President, Steven Hollander, was struck in the face and arm, but survived. Cirigliano and Louis Felder, the company's director of operations who also attended the termination meeting, were killed.

The application of Stephanie Laurin for her fiancee’s workers’ comp death benefits are a testament of our times in light of the acceptability now of couple’s living together without written legal contracts—either of domestic partnership or marriage.  What length of time should be considered sufficient, if any, for couples living together for the survivor of the non-legally-married or non-legally-in-a-domestic-partnership to claim benefits?  Should anyone who hasn’t legally documented their conjugal relationship be allowed to ever claim workers’ compensation benefits in the event of their “significant other’s” death on the job? 

These are new questions for our constantly evolving society to answer, and in this particular case, in light of how changing society should be viewed by workers’ compensation benefits laws.  

lonce@adjustercom.com