Tucked inside a law office conference room, Roderick “Kito” Jackson’s family remembered their beloved son and brother’s love for Christmas, his favorite holiday, and how he always got the best gifts for them, expecting nothing in return.
This Christmas, the family will be spending their holiday seeking justice and answers. They will be laying Kito to rest Saturday.
Jackson, a gas technician for National Grid, a company the 36-year-old Cambridge resident had worked for since 2021, died on the job Dec. 6 when suspect Peter Simon allegedly crashed into him at a construction detail in Waltham.
Jackson died alongside Waltham police officer Paul Tracey.
Jackson’s family for the past week, living what his mother Norma Asprilla called a “horrific nightmare that I cannot wake up from,” has been considering filing a civil lawsuit against Simon, a New Hampshire man who had a lengthy criminal record before he took away their “everything.”
“Why does this happen to our family? We are good to people. Our home is always open,” Asprilla said through tears. “We just can’t comprehend what’s happening. … The world needs peace. We need to put people in places they belong. We need to make sure safety for all.”
“I need answers,” the mother added.
Kito’s brother Manuel Asprilla-Hassan said: “We want justice. We want to keep my brother’s name alive. The person he was, he extended his hand to everyone.”
Thomas Flaws, of Boston-based Altman Nussbaum Shunnarah Trial Attorneys, has been working with the family on the lawsuit which had not been filed as of Friday afternoon, with an estate still not set up.
The initial defendant would be the driver, Flaws said, but they’d then follow the information and decide who else may be responsible at an institutional level.
In August 2009, Simon, a former resident of Brattleboro, Vt., fled from police before crashing head on into a public transportation bus in Keene, N.H. Simon was charged with several felonies and sentenced in 2011 to five years in a psychiatric unit in Hampshire State Prison in Concord.
Simon and the driver of the bus suffered minor injuries in the crash, while a passenger in the bus suffered injuries and was airlifted to a hospital, the Brattleboro Reporter reported at the time.Simon’s sentence was later terminated in November 2015.
Simon suffered from a “dissociative disorder” and a history of panic attacks, Cheshire County Attorney Peter Heed said at the time.
Filing the lawsuit, Flaws said, would serve two purposes: to get answers and to honor Kito’s memory.
“At this point, we have a lot of questions,” he said. “We know something absolutely horrific happened. The history with the person who did it is incredibly troubling. The family wants answers about why he was able to be out in the community and how something like this could ever have been allowed to happen.”
To further honor their beloved son and brother’s memory, the family is “ironing out” the details of a Kito Jackson Scholarship Fund that would honor his foremost passions: the community of Cambridge, family and sports.
Jackson, an alum of Cambridge Rindge And Latin School, played collegiate basketball and football at Framingham State University. He graduated in 2011 with a degree in business administration, the first family member to graduate from college, his brother Manuel said.
“If Kito was here, he’d ensure that there would be someone else just like him,” Manuel said. “Someone living the same life he lived, a reflection of himself, to be given the same opportunities, less fortunate, single-parent home, college is just a dream to them. We want to support those individuals, individuals that are a reflection of my brother.”
