It's happened again. Sadly, the spiral of needless deaths will continue unless the high-speed policies among law enforcement agencies are effectively changed across our state and nation.
I'm referring to the death of one 39-year-old Little Rock woman and her 18-year-old daughter who was critically injured the other night when a suspected car thief fleeing from police lost control, flipped the car and slammed into the pair as they enjoyed a peaceful twilight jog on a sidewalk along Chicot Road in Little Rock.
Yes, I just wrote "a sidewalk"--you know, the place designated specifically for pedestrians.
Police said 24-year-old Jordan Matthew Vandenberghe of Roland was driving a Nissan Maxima that had been reported stolen. He's now charged with first-degree murder and other related felonies.
But that doesn't bring Trendia Horton of Little Rock back to life any more than it does the late Terry Stambaugh of Harrison who died in July after Taney County, Mo., deputies chased 31-year-old Jason Adcock south from the Branson area until he crossed into the northbound lane of U.S. 65 near the state line and crashed headlong into Stambaugh's Toyota.
I recently wrote of Stambaugh's completely avoidable death and how he had joined a remarkably long list of innocent victims killed across America each year during high-speed police pursuits. Stambaugh, too, was a fine person and a valuable contributor in many ways to his community.
There has to be a better, far more intelligent, way for police to apprehend suspected criminals than joining in wild chases along public streets and thoroughfares. With global positioning systems being what they are in 2015, there must be a reasonable and effective alternative that promotes plain ol' common sense, for gosh sakes.
Tag the suspect's vehicle in some manner, get his or her license plate and be waiting for them back home. Get smarter than the situation.
Yes, I'd agree, a common-sense approach to apprehension could cost the Cops television program some viewers. After all, they'd lose the sensory thrills of flashing blue lights and screaming sirens captured on camera. Small price to pay.
Think how many of the 5,066 bystanders' and passengers' lives lost to reckless pursuits would have been saved between 1979 and 2013 had different policies been in place. That's the number totaled by a USA Today newspaper investigation published beneath a headline that pretty much summarized the problem: "A Death A Day."
The newspaper also found there are many more police chases every year than there are police shootings. And things have only worsened over the past 20 years. In 2013, the 322 deaths attributed to police chases were higher than the 317 documented in 1990, according to a report by the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
And it wasn't only about the citizens' lives. Some 139 officers lost theirs in pursuits during the period examined.
Another egregious example of how high-speed pursuits can and do lead to the deaths of innocents in our state is the September 2014 tragic case of beautiful 22-year-old newlywed Heather Cater of Traskwood.
Heather stood visiting with co-workers beside her car in the parking lot of Walgreens Drug Store at University Shopping Center one afternoon after leaving her job at a dentist's office.
As it turned out, she was standing in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time after Deonte Jones, suspect in a drug deal, fled from sheriff's deputies in an SUV that had been reported stolen.
The usual wild (and predictable) high-speed chase ensued and the way things unfolded, police had blocked a path through the Walgreens lot, and Jones was driving the wrong way in a one-way parking lot. That left Heather in what lawyer Darren O'Quinn described as a "zone of danger" with no place for her to escape. The SUV struck her, knocked her into the air, then dragged her 75 feet and ran over her. She died the next day.
The family filed a civil suit against the county, Jones, the sheriff's office and others in October.
Readers should understand I'm not opposing law enforcement. During these difficult times for police, I join those in standing solidly behind them and their increasingly tough job in protecting the law-abiding and innocent.
Rather, innocent Arkansans such as Cater, Stambaugh and Horton, all killed in less than a year, are exactly my point. It's past time to rethink the entire notion of high-speed chases that for the most part are unnecessary. It's past time to become more intelligent and discerning than the way we've always done things.
It's past time for so many citizens to stop dying for no justifiable reason.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 09/20/2015