When 22-year-old Payton Lewis and his girlfriend Samantha Ely died in a fiery single-vehicle accident Dec. 9, 2006, questions were raised regarding the cause of the crash. Now, nine months after the tragic accident, lawyers hired by Payton’s mother Delicia Lewis believe they know who is to blame. Jacksonville attorneys John Ament and Jeffrey Clark filed a wrongful death suit against Ford Motor Company Thursday claiming a faulty switch in Payton’s car caused his untimely death.
        “Payton was driving with his girlfriend asleep in the back seat,” Ament said Thursday. “According to the Department of Public Safety report, he drifted off to the right, overcorrected, came back and slid into two trees. The car then burst into flames, burning the two young people to death.
        “The death certificate shows that blunt force trauma was the cause of death, but we dispute that. We have two eye-witnesses that were on the road at the time of the wreck, who saw flames coming from the driver’s side of the vehicle before it ran off the road, which obviously negates the officers’ theory that the vehicle burst into flames on impact.”