Driver who killed 2 after crashing into soccer field won’t face charges

A woman who drove onto a soccer field and killed two people in Wichita, Kansas, last month will not face criminal charges, according to prosecutors.

The 34-year-old woman was allegedly asleep when her pickup truck accelerated onto the field of a Kansas youth soccer game, police said.

Investigators believe that the woman failed to put a Chevrolet 1500 Silverado in park and likely put her foot on the gas pedal while taking a nap at the Stryker Sports Complex on Oct. 17, according to the 28-page report from the Sedgwick County District Attorney.

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Her windshield was covered with a sunscreen and there were two children inside her vehicle, the report said.

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“There is no evidence to support the conclusion that she knew the truck was still in drive, or evidence to explain what motive she would have had to do so,” the report added.

Investigators said they interviewed more than 30 witnesses. Blood tests showed no evidence of drugs or anything that would have impaired her judgment, according to the report.

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Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan and Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett told reporters about their investigation into the incident during a news conference on Thursday.

Sullivan revealed that Cole Adrian, six, and Nicholas Schafer, 35, were killed and 10 others were injured in the incident, ranging in age from five to 68.

“A tragedy of this magnitude affects an entire community and people want answers. They want to understand how something like this could happen,” Sullivan said.

Bennett said the investigation found “no evidence of an intentional crime.”

“This is not a crime, and I cannot charge this driver with a crime,” Bennett told reporters.

“If she was asleep with the car in park and somehow inadvertently, while she was sleeping, the car was thrown into gear. I don’t have a mental state. There was no crime there,” Bennett added. “There is no path forward to a criminal culpability for her. The only consideration that I have is if she left it in park.”

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The woman woke up around 6 a.m. on the day of the crash and drove her husband’s truck from Garden City to the sports complex, where her child had a game, according to police.

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She was not in her usual vehicle because she said hers had issues with tire pressure, Sullivan said.

“I also want to be honest with our community: There are some questions we may never be able to answer with complete certainty,” Sullivan added.

Bennett said that he needed to determine whether the crash was “intentional” or “knowing.”

“There’s not a lot of difference between an intentional act and a knowing act, but it means the person, the nature of the person’s conduct that they knew or had knowledge of the nature of their conduct, and that they were aware of the nature of their conduct,” he explained. “I’ll give you the ones of the people who were there. She was sleepy; looked like she’d just woken up. These are comments from witnesses who arrived there at the door and interacted with her.”

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Bennet said that the woman told police that she put the truck in park before taking a nap.

“But thinking she had it in park and thinking it was OK to go to sleep, that’s not a conscious disregard. That’s a mistake,” Bennett added.

Bennett said that the only thing he could have possible charged the woman with was vehicular homicide, but said there is “not enough evidence” for that charge.

“There are no facts uncovered by this investigation to suggest this was an intentional act. There are no facts to conclude that this was a knowing act,” Bennett said.

“There are no facts in this case uncovered to conclude that this was a reckless act, as that term is defined by Kansas law, not as understood in common parlance as we talk about it in our daily lives. But conscious disregard. I cannot prove she consciously disregarded a tremendous risk to the people on that field,” he added.

—With files from The Associated Press

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