How police investigate pedestrian deaths can make or break a case
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How quickly and thoroughly police investigate deadly crashes is crucial to serving timely justice for victims, experts tell Axios.
Why it matters: An Axios analysis found that Harris County drivers who fatally strike pedestrians in crosswalks are often spared criminal charges in a legal process contingent on the quality of a police investigation.
Zoom in: When Shuet Ling Wong, 73, was hit and killed by a pickup driver on Bellaire Boulevard in November, Houston police investigators wrote in an initial report obtained by Axios, that she was hit 60 feet west of the crosswalk at Ranchester Drive and failed to yield the right-of-way.
- Investigators noted the driver turned too widely when rounding the corner and said heavy rain made "visibility difficult."
- After Wong was rushed to the hospital — where she was pronounced dead — officers questioned the driver, concluded he wasn't intoxicated and let him go.
Yes, but: "My mom was a rule follower," Mabel Wong said of her late mother in an interview with Axios.
- "Even if everyone was jaywalking, even if it took longer for her to stand at the crosswalk to wait for a walk signal, she would choose to do it that way."
Mabel Wong said her mother lived "very simply" and "would have made a very good nun."
- "She had very few material possessions, and what she did have was mostly of sentimental value … like drawings that her grandchildren made, her grandchildren's baby clothes, her and her parents' naturalization papers," Wong said.
- "She liked watching cooking shows and figure skating. She wrote beautiful Chinese calligraphy. Most of all, she loved spending time with us in the different places where we live and traveling with us."
Mabel Wong and her sisters flew into Houston to get answers.
- They uncovered surveillance video from a business showing Wong was in the crosswalk when she was struck.
- The video shows Wong's body was flung under the 6,000-pound pickup and dragged 60 feet before the driver stopped, Mabel Wong said. That's where police found her and incorrectly determined she'd been hit in the middle of the street.
After the video surfaced, police amended their official report and put sole blame on the driver, according to a copy of the updated report.
Between the lines: Houston police try to obtain surveillance video during on-scene probes but often leave that work up to follow-up investigators, according to HPD vehicular crimes division Capt. Donna Crawford.
- "Usually, the investigators are working more than one case at a time."
Crawford said the department is "always trying to balance those manpower issues," adding that detectives would have eventually gotten the footage of Wong.
- But waiting to get surveillance video sometimes leads to crucial evidence being lost forever.
Zoom out: Officers also routinely release drivers in deadly crashes and spend weeks or months completing an investigation if prosecutors don't immediately file charges.
- Investigations in those cases are then turned over to the district attorney's office, which decides whether to pursue charges.
What we're watching: Harris County prosecutors have yet to present the case of Wong's death to a grand jury, per court records.
- "I think about her lying on the cold and hard asphalt and the fact that she was always so careful to be neat and clean," Mabel Wong said. "I know that her life was so much more than her final moment."