“I can’t get out… I love you all.”

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – Text messages between an Impact Plastics supervisor and his daughter show workers were at the factory long after flood warnings were issued. Now a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Johnny Peterson’s family.

According to her lawyers, Peterson is one of six Impact Plastics employees killed after Hurricane Helene flooded the factory. Text messages between him and his daughter that morning describe the final moments before he was swept away.

Peterson sent his daughter Alexa a video of the flooded parking lot. The recording took place on Friday, September 27th at 10:44 a.m. That’s an hour and a half after the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the area, telling people to move to higher ground immediately. “He said at that point that they had better close the facility down, but they hadn’t,” Alexa said.

Then Peterson texted her a photo of the flooded break room at the facility. The following texts from him were:

“Can’t get out.”

“It’s bad, Lexie.”

“I love you all.”

Alexa asked her father to answer her calls. In his last text message to her at 1:30 p.m., he replied, “I can’t.”

“The whole thing feels like a fever dream,” Alexa said. “It doesn’t feel like he’s actually dead. It doesn’t feel like this flood actually happened.”

Alexa wants to know why management supposedly wouldn’t let workers leave at the first sign of trouble. A new lawsuit filed this week alleges that the issue mattered. “It appears from witness statements that the company was behind on some of its orders,” said attorney Alex Little, who is representing the family. “There were parts that needed to be gotten out the door that they were behind on.”

Small allegations: Impact Plastics and its owner, Gerald O’Connor, put lives at risk to meet deadlines. Little also claims that even though Impact Plastics was in a flood zone, there was no evacuation plan.

“If you can’t protect your workers in the middle of a disaster, running a factory like that doesn’t matter how big the company is,” Little said.

WSMV4 Investigates also obtained screenshots of emails from members of management from this week. An email was sent two days before the flooding on Wednesday September 25th. It came from Susan Chambers, CFO of Impact Plastics. It instructed employees to turn off their computers when they left on Friday because “power will be out over the weekend.” Little believes this shows the company was aware of the impending severe weather. Little said management told workers to come anyway on Friday and management allegedly didn’t let them leave in time to avoid the flooding.

The lawsuit alleges that the workers asked to leave multiple times throughout the morning but were not allowed to do so.

“At 11:35 a.m., with his employees trapped and fearing for their lives, defendant O’Connor and other executives had secretly exited the building through the back door after seizing some business documents from their own private offices,” it says the statement of claim.

A screenshot of a second email we received was sent at 9:28 a.m. on the day of the flood to reschedule a meeting for 1 p.m. that day. The email was sent 14 minutes after the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for the area. The lawsuit alleges that management, including O’Connor, knew about the alarms but failed to evacuate employees.

“The expectation was that everyone would still be at work at that point [1 p.m.]“, the lawsuit said.

“The anger that I have…There’s not much room for sadness,” Alexa said. “I have a feeling that will come later.”

WSMV4 reached out to Impact Plastics and O’Connor’s attorneys. We have not received any response.

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