Authorities Thursday revealed the cause of the perplexing accident involving a Kansas mom who fatally crashed her truck into a soccer game: the woman was taking a nap behind the wheel of her parked truck only to wake up inside a runaway vehicle and a real life nightmare.
Police also said she will not face criminal charges in the accident that took the lives of two, including a child, and injured ten others.
The 34-year-old mom, whom police have not identified, plowed into a crowd of people at the Stryker Sports Complex in Wichita, Kansas on October 17, as reported the next day by Breitbart News and numerous other outlets.
Fatally injured were Cole Adrian, 6, and Nicholas Schafer, 35. Ten others, ranging in age from 5 to 68, were also injured, according to recent reports.
Authorities believe she may not have realized the vehicle was not in park, and she may have taken her foot off the brake and pressed the gas as she slept.
Long awaited toxicology reports recently came in that confirmed the woman was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, authorities said.
“I have zero evidence that this was in any way impacted by intoxication, driving under the influence,” Marc Bennett, the Sedgwick County District Attorney, said in a press conference streamed live by KAKE News on YouTube:
The district attorney went into detail about everything that led up to the fatal incident which made national headlines.
The mom told police she had been up since 6 a.m. the day of the incident and had driven her husband’s truck 200 miles from Garden City where she lives. She also told them she was not completely familiar with the truck and had been driving it only a few days.
“Her normal vehicle had some trouble with the air and tires and she asked her husband to fix it because she was concerned that it would not be safe to drive all the way to Wichita,” Bennett told reporters.
The mom first arrived at the complex around 10:40 a.m., left around 1:20 p.m., then returned about an hour later and parked near one of the soccer fields.
“She parks. She tells her kids she’s tired, which would be consistent with having gotten up that morning and driven that far,” Bennett said. “[She] takes her seat all the way back and goes to sleep.”
The crash happened less than an hour later, investigators said.
The woman told investigators she woke up to her kids “screaming.”
“She’s disoriented, she’s trying to sit up from a completely relaxed position to sit forward,” Bennett said.
“I cannot only find no evidence of an intentional crime, I can find affirmative evidence that there was not an intentional crime,” Bennett said.
The mom was horrified after realizing what had happened.
“Oh my God, Oh my God, what have I done?!” she shouted as she was pulled from the car by horrified witnesses in the immediate aftermath.
Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan said his department’s investigation found no mechanical faults with the truck she was driving.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more
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