The Missouri Department of Transportation has agreed to pay more than $620,000 to the family of a 13-year-old girl who was killed when a car driven by her father ended up in the frozen Meramec River after hitting plowed snow. MoDOT crews had piled the snow on a bridge on Interstate 55 in Jefferson County. Higginsville resident Donald Johnston was driving with his daugher, Stephanie, when they hit the snow that had been piled next to the guard rail of a bridge spanning the river. The teenager plunged through a hole in the ice and drowned while her father suffered a broken neck. The case went to arbitrators who decided that MoDOT had created a dangerous condition by plowing the snow against the guard rail and leaving it there.
