Less than two hours after a truck accident at the base of Avon Mountain near Avon, CT, claimed the lives of four people, the company that owned the truck was attempting to have its vehicle insurance reinstated, according to court records.

On July 29, a 12-wheeled dump truck owned by American Crushing and Recycling careened down Route 44 near Avon, slamming into cars waiting at the intersection with Route 10. Four were killed, including the truck’s driver, Abdulraheem Naafi, also known as Terrance R. Stokes.

But now, new evidence shows that American Crushing and Recycling had suspended coverage on the vehicle on Jan. 3, and had cashed the almost-$40,000 refund check, the Hartford Courant reported. Then, 118 minutes after the crash, the company’s insurance agent requested a reinstatement of the suspended coverage, retroactive to July 1.

On Thursday, Sept. 22, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell asked the state’s attorney general to determine if the company could be criminally charged with fraud for operating without insurance.

“The more I learn about this company the more enraged and horror-struck I become,” Rell said in a statement.

The accident sparked public interest and outrage, causing officials to take a hard look at safety violators within the state. On Aug. 17, Rell asked for a top-25 list of companies with poor safety records. Those companies underwent additional inspections, putting 61 trucks out of service.

However, the list faced scrutiny for not including companies based in Connecticut and operating out-of-state. On Aug. 23, the state’s Transportation Commissioner released a second list of the top 25 interstate companies with poor safety records on order of the governor.

Department of Transportation records show that inspectors had found five brake violations on the truck involved in the crash during inspections in the past. All of the problems were corrected, according to Newsday.

American Crushing and Recycling, the company that owned the truck, also had 448 mechanical violations between 1994 and 2001 while operating as Wilcox Trucking. The company changed names after the state Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the registrations of 16 of its trucks because they failed to comply with a number of repair orders, a DMV spokesperson told Newsday.

Despite a number of violations, the company was not in either of the lists for the top 25 violators in the state.

Naafi’s own history is also being questioned in the investigation. The accident occurred just two days after he began working for American Crushing and Recycling – the day after he was fired from another trucking company partially because he could not operate the truck’s transmission, Newsday reported.

Under a third, unreleased name, Naafi had a criminal record that included a robbery conviction.