A soccer mom was taking a nap in her van when it suddenly sped onto the field at a Kansas youth tournament where her child was playing, kill two peoplewill not face criminal charges, a prosecutor said.
Investigators believe the 34-year-old woman failed to park the Chevrolet 1500 and likely put her foot on the gas pedal while she slept at the Stryker Sports Complex in Wichita on Oct. 17. They conducted several interviews and even did a test in the same parking space with a similar vehicle.
“I cannot prove that she consciously ignored a tremendous risk to people working in this field,” Sedgwick County Prosecutor Marc Bennett said Thursday.
He acknowledged that the public might find his decision strange. Bennett’s 28-page report lists possible crimes that could be triggered when one person causes the death of another person, but says none amount to a football field tragedy under Kansas law.
“If I could charge someone, why wouldn’t I? » Bennett said at a press conference. “But I also have an obligation to stand up and say, ‘It’s not here.'”
A child and an adult were killed
The two people killed at the scene were Cole Adrian, 6, and Nicholas Schafer, 35, both of McPherson, Kansas, police said. Ten other people aged 5 to 68 were treated in area hospitals.
Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan said his department spoke to victims and families before the report and other information were made public.
“Every avenue has been investigated. Every piece of evidence has been examined. Every reasonable avenue available to us has been explored. … Our responsibility is not to fill in the gaps with assumptions or speculation,” Sullivan said.
The report says the day began with the woman heading to the soccer field with her three children. After two games, they left the Stryker complex for a meal and returned around 2:30 p.m. for another game.
While one child went to play in a field, the mother and her two other children stayed in the van. She said she was going to take a nap and a girl covered the windshield with two-panel sunscreen, according to the report. Less than an hour later, the vehicle started moving.
“There is no evidence to conclude that she knew the truck was still rolling, nor is there any evidence to explain what motive she would have had for doing so,” the report states.
The investigators returned with their own truck
Wichita police detectives performed an identical test. They parked a Chevrolet 1500 in the same pit and also in drive mode – and “the truck remained in place until the accelerator was stepped on,” the report states.
“We sat there and waited and waited,” Bennett said at a news conference. “After about 15 minutes, we were like, ‘This truck isn’t moving.’ …The tires hit a 7-inch curb and it didn’t move.
Investigators said they interviewed more than 30 witnesses. Blood tests showed no traces of drugs that could have impaired the driver’s judgment, according to the report.
The report states the woman woke up to screams from inside and outside the truck and the feeling of the vehicle moving.
Bennett said people who immediately pulled the driver from the truck found her asleep, “sobbing, sometimes described as frantic, hysterical, saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. What did I do?’
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