Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett announced on Thursday, November 12, that no criminal charges will be filed against the 34-year-old Garden City woman whose pickup truck drove onto a youth soccer field at Wichita's Stryker Sports Complex on October 17, killing two people and injuring ten others. The decision closes the criminal investigation into the crash, which Awaaz Punjab covered last month when the driver was released while police continued their inquiry.
Source: Kansas Public Radio / KMUW
Those killed were a 6-year-old boy from McPherson and Nicholas Schafer, 35, also of McPherson, who died when the Chevrolet Silverado travelled onto the field and through the sidelines of an active youth soccer match. Ten people were injured, ranging in age from 5 to 68 years old, and Bennett said none of them is facing critical injuries at this time.
What the month-long investigation found
Bennett said the nearly month-long investigation included more than 100 interviews, footage from security cameras and cell phones, toxicology reports and reenactments carried out with automotive technicians. He said he met Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan at the start of the investigation and committed to try to “know everything that is knowable” about how the truck reached the field.
Sullivan laid out the timeline of October 17. The driver left Garden City at around 7 a.m. with her three children for their soccer games and arrived at the complex by 10:40 a.m. for the first set of matches. The family later left to get lunch and do some shopping, and by the time they returned the parking lots were crowded. Video showed the truck circling the lot for several minutes before pulling into one of the few remaining stalls — by chance, the one with an open pathway onto the fields. “Through a sad coincidence, she finds the one stall that's right there in front with an open pathway onto the fields,” Bennett said. “No indication whatsoever that she waited for that stall to come open, it's just happenstance.”
The woman, who was driving her husband's truck, which she did not normally drive, told investigators she decided to take a nap after parking. Her 14-year-old daughter told detectives she covered the windshield with a sun shade after her mother fell asleep. Surveillance video showed the truck was stationary for 46 minutes before it accelerated onto the field, and witnesses told police the woman seemed “sleepy” beforehand and was “crying hysterically” as she got out of the truck afterwards.
Source: Associated Press
A closer look at the vehicle proved key. Two of the woman's children told police they had to unlock the doors to get out of the truck after their mother went to sleep, and Bennett's report notes that this Chevrolet Silverado model automatically locks its doors when the truck is in drive. Wichita police borrowed a truck of the same make, model and mileage from a local Chevrolet dealership and discovered it could stall against the 7-inch curb in the parking spot while still in drive — and that even light pressure on the gas pedal brought it over the curb and onto the field during the reenactment.
Investigators also ruled out the other explanations one by one. A sample of the woman's blood, tested by the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center, showed no impairing substances, her medical records showed no outstanding issue, and a General Motors engineer and technician who flew in to Wichita to examine the truck found no mechanical problems. “I can not only find no evidence of an intentional crime,” Bennett said, “I can find affirmative evidence that there was not an intentional crime.”
Why Kansas law does not support charges
Bennett said he ultimately had to decide whether the woman's “single act of inattentiveness” — falling asleep without putting the truck in park — showed the conscious disregard of risk that Kansas law requires for first- or second-degree murder, child endangerment or involuntary manslaughter charges. He found it did not. “As bad as this was, it is not a crime,” he said. “This is a civil matter that will be handled under a negligence standard, which is the standard in civil cases. This is not a crime, and I cannot charge this driver with a crime.”
Bennett's 28-page report concluded that “without the act of leaving the car in drive (or someone inadvertently placing the truck into drive without the driver's knowledge) this wreck would not have occurred.”
What happens next: asked at Thursday's news conference whether new evidence could still lead to charges, Bennett said he doubted it — “I think we're done here.” The criminal file is therefore closed on the current evidence, and any further legal remedy for the families now lies in the civil courts under a negligence standard. Authorities have not publicly identified the driver.
Stryker Sports Complex is one of the busiest youth sports venues in Wichita, and the case has become a stark example of how an ordinary moment — a tired parent napping between her children's games — can turn fatal without any intent. For the many Punjabi diaspora families in the United States whose weekends revolve around children's sports, the findings carry a simple, practical warning: a vehicle left in drive, even one resting against a curb, is not parked.