Detective Deidre Mengedoht
32 years young.
EOW Christmas Eve 2018
Posted on 12/25/2018 3:16:15 AM PST by lightman
Detective Deidre Mengedoht was killed when her patrol car was struck by an impaired driver while conducting a traffic stop on I-64, between 4th Street and 6th Street, in downtown Louisville just after 2:00 pm.
Her vehicle was stopped in the right lane with its emergency equipment activated when it was struck from behind by a Metropolitan Sewer District tractor-trailer. The patrol car was pushed into the vehicle she had stopped and became engulfed in flames with Detective Mengedoht trapped inside.
The driver of the tractor-trailer was charged with driving under the influence and murder of a law enforcement officer.
Detective Mengedoght had served with the Louisville Metro Police Department for seven years. She is survived by a young son.
Detective Deidre Mengedoht
32 years young.
EOW Christmas Eve 2018
Prayers for her and her loved ones.
Poor girl, and her family...
Terrible tragedy. And a great reminder to love and appreciate everyone who walks through my door today to celebrate Christmas.
You never know what will happen next...
Condolences and sincere best wishes to her grieving loved ones.
It was a needless tragedy. Are traffic stops worth the risks when it means being stopped on the road or road side of a high speed interstate? Why not have the driver pull over in the first safe place? In my area we have had a few LEOs killed in just this manner. Yet I still see cars pulled over but still partially blocking a lane and a cop car using his blue lights has some sort of invincibility shield.
My family will not stop roadside for a flat tire. The instruction is to keep driving until you are able to stop somewhere safe. Even if a tire and or even a rim are destroyed.
So heartbreaking. This happened about 20 minutes from where we live. We were actually traveling on I-64, heading to downtown Louisville when we heard this on the local news. We were detoured around the area. So very sad, and my prayers go out to all.
“cop car using his blue lights has some sort of invincibility shield.”
This is true too. After working on the side of the freeway all my life there is something else I have discovered. The lights themselves are a huge problem not considered. Unfortunately they inadvertently attract steering wheels towards them like moths to a light bulb, especially if someone is impaired.
And the brighter they are the worse this happens because folks are blinded from the lane lines even more. After three near misses against myself I stopped turning on my emergency strobes years ago and this all stopped. If they want to be safer, they really need to dim these strobe lights down a bunch at night. They are making the situation worse and less safe.
Very tragic, especially for her young son.
Not that it matters, but I wonder why a detective was conducting a traffic stop.
“And the brighter they are the worse this happens because folks are blinded from the lane lines even more.”
I’ve thought that too. Especially on a dark and rainy night. I mean - it is good those blue lights really catch one’s attention at a long distance. But just too bright up close. I wonder if there could be a way to have different lights visible at different distances?
Like having the blue lights aimed upwards, and dimmer ambers closer in? Probably not.
I had an old boss that used to call the police “The blue meanies”. (For the sake of the tickets they passed out - nothing more.)
Driving under the influence of ...what...I wonder.
It is tragic she was killed but it is also dangerous for all when police stop people on the side of the highway. The practice ought to be to stop them at the next exit. Don’t stop on the highway. It is dangerous.
“It was a needless tragedy. Are traffic stops worth the risks when it means being stopped on the road or road side of a high speed interstate? Why not have the driver pull over in the first safe place? In my area we have had a few LEOs killed in just this manner. Yet I still see cars pulled over but still partially blocking a lane and a cop car using his blue lights has some sort of invincibility shield.
My family will not stop roadside for a flat tire. The instruction is to keep driving until you are able to stop somewhere safe. Even if a tire and or even a rim are destroyed.”
Yes.
I’ll bet it wasn’t frankincense and myrrh.
Tragic. God rest her soul. But a word of caution to anyone taking prescription meds. From this article, the driver wasn't charged drunk driving, rather impaired driving. If one reads the labels on their prescriptions vials carefully many come with the words "caution while operating motor vehicles" on them. This could be the case here. I take my meds at night after dinner when the likely hood of me driving is almost zero.
Christmas is forever ruined for her family.
Does it matter?
One of the effects of modern sewage disposal is that dried sludge is carted away from treatment facilities to dumps all over the place. You see a tremendous number of sludge trucks on the road, all loaded to the max weight, pulling loads between the same two points, every day of the year.
It is repetitive, boring work. I have to think that there are more than a few drivers on these routes who are either inexperienced, or just not paying attention, and I give these trucks a wide berth.
If it has to be something, which it obviously was, I hope it’s opiates and anti-depressants...Those two, along with some of those other prescribed med’s that are actually advertised as having all sorts of known unpredictable side effects, including death. Autonomous vehicles are not the answer to anything when it’s the lack of self-control of some people who may as well be under the influence of liquor and drugs when they use their phones for carrying on text message conversations while they drive. The switch to autonomous vehicles are just a work-around to the more serious underlying problem of a general lack of self-control and it’s not just in how they drive.
oh so very true,you have to plan that the other drivers do not see you
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