She was speeding, but the officer performed the insane practice of stepping out into traffic to flag her down.
Her acts, by themselves, are not criminal (71mph in a 55mph).
It was the officer’s actions that caused this and the Grand Jury saw it that way, as well.
The headline makes it sound bad, but it is no worse than cops shooting someone reaching for their wallet, then getting off scot-free.
I agree completely.
However, he made a fatal mistake when he stepped out in front of a fast moving car, and it's not reasonable to hold the driver responsible for not being able to react quickly enough to avoid hitting him.
It is a shame that such accidents happen, and that an officer died because of a mistake he made while performing his duty.
The woman is responsible for her kinetic energy. The officer is responsible for walking onto a highway in a safe manner.
Anyone know what time of day it was? On several occasions I’ve seen officers try to flag people down at night by raising their hand while shining the light in the drivers eyes (and therefore making it hard to see the officer or his hand) rather than shining the light on their hands or otherwise making themselves more visible.
Just damn....
We were driving down a four lane highway one day, when a state trooper pulled off the road ahead of us and lurched herself out of her patrol car into our lane of traffic — she was trying to flag down a motorist behind us and acted as if we were not there.......with a car in the passing lane we had to slam on the brakes and pray.....she got out of the way just in time. Scared the dickens out of us. We were not speeding at all, but it IS 65 MPH on that stretch of the road. The fool was lucky to be alive after that stunt.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!