Streeter: What justice can — and can’t — do for the families of the Key Bridge victims

The long quest for accountability in the Key Bridge disaster took another turn Monday. A federal judge postponed indefinitely a civil trial for the remaining parties seeking to recover economic losses they suffered after a cargo ship destroyed the bridge in 2024, killing six construction workers and disrupting commerce.

While Baltimore City, Baltimore County and some businesses will have to wait for any hope of economic restoration, arguably the most aggrieved group — the families of the men killed and the bridge’s lone survivor — settled last week for an undisclosed sum.

This is a good thing, but it’s “bittersweet because these families won’t have an opportunity to experience the seasons of life with their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons,” attorney L. Chris Stewart, who represents four of the families and the survivor, wrote in a statement Thursday.

I always believed that efforts of the companies, Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group, to stall the civil trial was a weasel move. I’m happy for the families, who presumably are at least financially relieved.

But for me, true catharsis involves confronting those you consider guilty face to face and telling them what they did to you. Because of the settlement, that’s not going to happen in a civil case.

No amount of money brings Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, Miguel Luna, Maynor Yassir, Suazo Sandoval, José Mynor López or Carlos Hernández back. And I don’t know if I even believe in closure. My question is whether justice — civil or otherwise— helps heal trauma. Are we looking for a reckoning or peace?

“Justice can help psychologically,” said Shinelle Oglesby, owner of Urban Trauma Counseling in Windsor Mill. “It’s not the same as closure. What it does is give accountability. It can help reach a sense of validation. Families may feel, ‘What happened to me, what’s happened to my family?’ has meaning now or helps someone else. It helps get me out of a stuck place. Now I’m not just ignored.’”

As a survivor of trauma, I absolutely hate when people try to push the grieved to move on too quickly or say that their loved one is in a better place or some such nonsense. The best place for them would be sitting on the couch next to you. When my father died in 2012, my uncle, whose own father had passed just months earlier, gave me some lovingly realistic advice: “You will move through this,” he said, “but you will never get over it.”

My father died of cancer, so I could not sue, though I would have if it were possible. In the case of the bridge victims’ families, definitive actions like a verdict or settlement can be “the integration of the thing that happened to us, that forces us to come to some sort of place of acceptance,” said Justina Stokes of Baltimore Therapy Group in Towson.

Both Stokes and Oglesby stressed the importance of taking steps toward healing when it is emotionally safe to do so. When my husband died in 2015, I watched movies like “John Wick,” “The Equalizer” and every flick where Patrick Swayze or Liam Neeson kicks somebody in the face because it made me feel power in a situation where I had none.

Stokes doesn’t suggest revenge or kicking people, but for the families, this lawsuit was a way to take action. “Otherwise, you’re showing up with trauma running the show, writing the script in the background,” she said.

That can be especially true, Oglesby said, when faced with a sudden loss, like the families of the bridge collapse victims. One’s whole physical, emotional and spiritual center can be shaken, making it “a severe shock to the nervous system,” Oglesby added.

In addition, the bridge survivors also found themselves at the heart of an international story that sprung from a singular, shocking incident, and not, say, a gradual illness. “People become so fixated on the circumstances of the death as much as the loss of a person. The repeated media coverage can make you relive the trauma,” Oglesby said.

Does the settlement with the companies deny the families that in-person moment of reckoning and confrontation needed optimally to move forward? I was surprised to hear that neither of the therapists believes that.

“Sharing one’s story feels important to be able to do, regardless, even if you’re not believed,” Stokes said. “The worst-case scenario is that justice is not shared, but being able to validate your own experience, saying it out loud and doing what’s right, can be empowering.”

Would the case help that empowerment even if there had been no settlement? “Of course it’s a win,” Oglesby said. “Being acknowledged in those feelings of it being a senseless tragedy can in some way restore a sense of agency. But justice alone does not create that resilience. When survivors feel validated and supported, that can grow along with the healing process.”

And you didn’t have to kick anybody.