After a weekslong investigation into a driver whose truck plowed into a crowd on a soccer field in Kansas, killing two people and injuring 10 others, a prosecutor has announced that no criminal charges would be filed.
The events on Oct. 17 were a tragedy and a mistake, the district attorney said, but the evidence was insufficient to prove that the driver had intended to hurt anyone.
“Not everybody may be at peace with this decision,” Marc Bennett, the district attorney of Sedgwick County, said at a news conference on Thursday.
The driver of the car had found a parking spot at a sports complex in Wichita and appeared to have fallen asleep in the driver’s seat before the vehicle jumped a curb and accelerated onto a soccer field full of people, according to a report released Thursday by Mr. Bennett.
The driver, a 34-year-old woman, has not been publicly identified. The two people who died were Cole Adrian, 6, and Nicholas Schafer, 35, both of McPherson, Kan.
The report said that there was no evidence that the driver of the car had been impaired by any substance or had experienced a medical emergency. It remains unclear whether the truck was in gear when she fell asleep.
“The notion that I could establish and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did this intentionally is just simply not there,” Mr. Bennett said.
Mr. Bennett described the episode as a “an act of negligence,” but he added that Kansas does not have a negligent homicide statute. “It’s not on the books,” he said.
He added that given the absence of clear intent or recklessness, the case also did not meet the legal criteria for a charge of vehicular homicide, a misdemeanor.
On the morning of Oct. 17, the driver left Garden City, Kan., at 7 a.m. with her three children in the car, the district attorney’s report said. Around 10:40, she arrived at the Stryker Sports Complex, where her two younger children, both 11, had soccer games.
After that, the family left the complex and visited two fast food restaurants and another business in the area. The report said that they returned to the complex for another game in the afternoon, and the driver told her children that she would take a nap. Her older daughter, 14, pulled a sun shade over the windshield. The younger daughter fell asleep in the back seat, officials said, and the son left to play soccer.
The vehicle, a Chevrolet Silverado Trail Boss truck, was stationary for about 46 minutes before it jolted over a seven-inch concrete curb at roughly 3:20 p.m. and onto a part of the field where spectators had gathered, the report said.
“The driver, whose chair was still fully reclined, told detectives she awoke to her daughters’ screams, the feeling of the truck moving, and the sounds of people screaming outside the truck,” the report said, adding that she had struggled to remove the sun shade from the windshield.
The report said that the truck’s brake lights had activated eight seconds after the car began to move.
Witnesses described the woman as “sleepy,” “unsure,” and “crying hysterically,” the report said. Witnesses also said that they heard her apologize multiple times, and one quoted her as saying: “I never should have come.”
According to the report, the woman had borrowed the truck, her husband’s, that morning, because the tires on her own vehicle had been losing air, and she was worried about whether she could safely make the nearly four-hour drive to Wichita.
The woman cooperated with the police, the report said, and a toxicology report found “no presence of any impairing substances in her blood.” There was also no evidence that the woman had suffered a medical emergency, Mr. Bennett said. His office declined further comment.
At the news conference, Mr. Bennett said that investigators had used a vehicle with the same make and model as the woman’s truck to recreate the scene in an effort to understand why the car had jumped the curb. He said it was possible that the driver had failed to put the truck into park before she took a nap, and then shifted in her sleep, pressing the accelerator.
Joe Sullivan, the chief of the Wichita Police Department, said at the news conference that the deaths had weighed heavily on the community, as well as on the families of the boy and the man who were killed.
“While nothing shared today can undo the loss or lessen the pain experienced by those most affected,” he said, “we hope this update provides a better understanding of what happened, and confidence that every reasonable effort has been made to uncover the truth.”
Cole’s father, Chris Adrian, has said that his family was heartbroken by the loss and described his son as “an incredible kid” who “could put a smile on anyone’s face.” On Friday, he declined to comment about the prosecutor’s decision.
Family members of Mr. Schafer and lawyers representing the people injured could not be reached for comment.
Maia Spoto contributed reporting.
The post No Criminal Charges for Driver of Truck That Plowed Into Crowd in Kansas appeared first on New York Times.
