Authorities declined to file charges against napping woman whose truck accelerated on to field during youth game
A soccer mom napping in her pickup truck when it suddenly accelerated on to the field at a Kansas youth tournament where her child was playing, killing two people, won’t face criminal charges, a prosecutor has said.
Investigators believe the 34-year-old woman had failed to put the Chevrolet 1500 in park and likely put her foot on the gas pedal while sleeping at the Stryker Sports Complex in Wichita on 17 October. They conducted multiple interviews and even ran a test in the same parking spot with a similar vehicle.
“I cannot prove she consciously disregarded a tremendous risk to people on that field,” the Sedgwick county district attorney, Marc Bennett, said on Thursday.
He acknowledged the public might find his decision strange. Bennett’s 28-page report listed possible crimes that might be triggered when a person causes the death of another person but said none fit the soccer field tragedy under Kansas law.
“If I could charge somebody, why wouldn’t I?” Bennett said at a news conference. “But I also have an obligation to stand up and say, ‘It’s not here.’”
The two people killed at the scene were Cole Adrian, six, and Nicholas Schafer, 35, both from McPherson, Kansas, police said.
