Hartford Distributors Victim's Girlfriend Fights For Workers' Comp Benefits

  • Stephanie Laurin and her fiance William Ackerman at a picnic held in East Hampton on July 11, 2010. Less than three weeks later Ackerman was one of eight workers killed at Hartford Distributors Inc. Laurin is fighting the company's insurer to get workmen's compensation benefits.
Stephanie Laurin and her fiance William Ackerman at a picnic held in East… (Courtesy Stephanie Laurin )
March 20, 2011|By DAVE ALTIMARI, daltimar@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

Stephanie Laurin and William Ackerman were set to be married last October, but their plans ended when a gunmen killed Ackerman at Hartford Distributors in August.

Now, as she picks up the pieces of the life she knows is lost forever, Laurin, 36, is fighting the company and its insurer to get Ackerman's workers' compensation benefits, which amount to about $500 a week.

It's a case, legal experts say, that could end up in the state's Supreme Court.

"Bill and I lived together and we were about to get married and that was all taken away from me,'' Laurin said. "I cry everyday. I lost what I wanted in life, my whole future. How am I supposed to go on?"

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In documents filed with the state Workers' Compensation Commission, the attorney representing Hartford Distributors and FutureComp claims state law is clear: Laurin, who lived with Ackerman, 51, for nearly four years, doesn't have a legitimate claim because she isn't a family member.

"To properly initiate a claim a person must be either themselves the injured employee, that person's dependant or the dependant's legal representative,'' Middletown attorney Elycia D. Solimene, who is representing the two companies.

Solimene said in the documents that state law defines a "dependant" as a member of the injured employee's family who was wholly or partly dependant upon the earnings of the employee at the time of the injury.

Solimene argues that Laurin fits none of those categories.

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"Ms. Laurin was not legally married to Mr. Ackerman, was not a member of his family or his next of kin at the time of his death and is not eligible to receive workers' compensation benefits,'' Solimene wrote.

Laurin, who filed the initial claim herself but has now hired an attorney, said the law isn't so stark.

"Right now it is not really clear as to what they consider a dependant, in fact, and it is not clear that it has to be a blood relative,'' she said.

Laurin said her three children from a previous relationship keep her going. She said Ackerman treated the children as his own. Three days before the shooting, the family had returned from what was becoming a summer tradition for the five of them: a week on the beach in Westerly, R.I.

The couple met nearly four years ago at the bar in South Windsor where Laurin still works. Ackerman who was over 6 feet tall and weighed about 250 pounds, had a "heart as big as his body," Laurin said.

Ackerman had worked at Hartford Distributors in Manchester for almost 20 years when he left their home in the Broad Brook section of East Windsor on Aug. 3 and headed off to the Manchester warehouse.

"It was my last day of vacation and I begged him to take the day off and spend it with me, but he said he had to go to work,'' Laurin said.

Ackerman was in charge of the breakage room, the area where cases of beer with broken bottles are returned, located in the back of the warehouse. When Omar Thornton walked into the warehouse and started shooting that day, he made his way back to that area and shot Ackerman.

Laurin is convinced that Thornton targeted Ackerman. She said Ackerman and Thornton had words one day when Thornton was sent back to help him in the breakage room but didn't do any work. Ackerman told him to leave, she said.

On the morning of Aug. 3, a friend who had a police scanner called to tell her there was chatter about a shooting on Chapel Road, near where Hartford Distributors is located. She immediately drove there but police were setting up barricades and she got little information other than that some people had been shot.

She was told to go to Manchester High School, where employees were being bused in. As people starting arriving and there was no sign of Ackerman, she approached the Manchester police official in charge of the scene and asked if all the victims had been identified.

Police told her there was at least one victim that they couldn't identify. She gave them a picture of her and Ackerman and also told them Ackerman had another identifying feature — his toenails were pink because her daughter had painted them while on vacation and he didn't want to wash them off.

A little while later, police came back and told her Ackerman was dead. Crying hysterically, Laurin thought about one of the last things that Ackerman said to her.

"Just before he left Bill turned and said, 'If I die today, will you tell the coroner why my toenails are painted pink?'" Laurin said. "It's almost like he had a premonition something bad was going to happen."

Laurin spends a lot of time thinking about what might have been. The meeting that that involved Thornton, union officials and company officials had been postponed twice the week before. If the meeting had taken place on those earlier dates, Ackerman would have still been on vacation in Rhode Island.

Laurin filed a workers' compensation claim on Aug. 26 against Hartford Distributors and it's insurer, FutureComp.

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