LA: A young woman who was left with a permanent brain injury while working as an extra on the movie Transformers 3 received an $18.5 million settlement today. Gabriella Cedillo, then 24, was airlifted to hospital after being hit in the head as she drove a car during a stunt in September 2010.
A cable under tension snapped and smashed through the windshield of the Toyota driven by Miss Cedillo on location in Hammond, Indiana.
The young woman was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital and underwent emergency surgery for serious head injuries. The 26-year-old suffered irreversible damage following the incident.
Her attorneys said a 'completely inadequate superficial weld had been applied in a failed effort to secure the bracket to the [stunt] car' according to NBC.
Miss Cedillo's lawyers added that Paramount Pictures and DreamWork’s Studios did everything they could avoid paying their employee's medical bills and had brought several lawsuit to avoid paying the young woman compensation, according to NBC.
A Cook County judge approved the multi-million dollar settlement today. At the time of the accident in 2010, a witness said: 'The cable snapped, and the cable went into the westbound lane where we were at and hit the girl’s car, smashed the windshield.
'From the way it looked, I don’t know if she was knocked out immediately or not but the... vehicle just went, it just kept going.'Ms Cedillo was not a stuntwoman but simply an extra in the blockbuster film.
On that particularly fateful day of shooting, she was one of the extras who opted to driver her own car, a 2006 Toyota sedan, during a freeway scene.
'We weren't trained stunt people,' an on-set source told RadarOnline.'They paid regular extras to use their own personal cars an extra $25 per day for that freeway scene.
'We were never informed of the risk we were putting ourselves in and when you take into consideration the amount you are being paid to be there, it's not worth it.'
Ms Cedillo's brother told the local NBC affiliate that his sister worked as a bank teller at the time of the incident, but she took on extra roles in an effort to break into the film industry.
'This was not her first time as an extra,' her brother Adam said, without expanding into what other films his sister had appeared in.She always wanted to be in movies.'
On the set, director Michael Bay was said to have given the crew a lecture on the importance of safety shortly before the incident, but considering the on-set source's comments, that lecture must not have extended to the extras.
The accident happened on the penultimate day, with the set closed and filming postponed as a result. Shocking footage of the crash itself was obtained by RadarOnline. It shows that a large tractor-type car was hooked up to a white sedan on the opposite side of the freeway median. For whatever reason, the cable snapped and whipped over to the right side, then hitting Ms Cedillo's car as she drove in the opposite direction.
The family's lawyer told the site: 'She appears to be quite impaired with her ability to understand and appreciate everything. 'I'm not saying she's not coping...and considering where people thought she would be, she's fortunate. But she has the function of a small child right now.'
Transformers 3 starred Shia LaBeouf, Patrick Dempsey, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and British model Rosie Huntington-Whitely.
