Anniversary of Injustice

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February 12, 2012 has stuck in my consciousness like a bad dream.  A fourteen year old boy was hit and killed early in the morning by a truck near the Best Western and even before I knew the name and the circumstances behind the victim and the truck's driver, I had a bad feeling about the case.  Having done some of my own research, getting the full report from the agencies involved after several tries and digesting the information over the last couple months had me very upset with the disposition of the case, the conflicts of interest the investigators had, the inadequacy of the investigation, and the self-contradicting aspects of the records.  These will be revealed and analyzed with the light of the Ludington Torch, and we will try to seek justice and allies for the cause of justice for Darius.

Today was the anniversary of that accident, and it just so happened to coincide with the County Commissioner's February meeting.  I decided to break the subject to them, so that they could be aware of the basics behind it, and hopefully decide to learn more about the issues involved.

 

This was my first time of going to the County meeting, and the first thing I noticed after seating myself in the courtroom they convene at was that the Commissioners and the County Administrator had an interesting arrangement, where the one side of the room containing Commissioners from the 5th through 7th Districts (Nichols, Anderson, Posma) all were wearing sweaters, and the other side of the room with 1st through 4th district commissioners (Lenius, Carpenter, Lange, and Vanderwall) and Administrator Knizacky all wore suits and ties.  Sweaters in the east, suits to the west of the county; sweet.  It helped me deal with the nervousness of getting in front of this group and the small audience that was present.  After the usual start of the meeting formalities it came time for public comment and I stood up and began.

"Exactly one year ago today, a 14 year old boy was killed not far from here, the pedestrian victim in a traffic accident. Darius Vanbrook was his name. At about 5:30 AM on a Sunday morning, he was walking on the side of the highway across from the horse stables at the fairgrounds and was hit by a Mason County Correction Officer in his truck who had just finished a twelve hour shift at the County jail. The correction officer never saw the boy, a member of his school's safety patrol for years, walking on the side of the road that morning even though there was a street light located where the point of impact occurred.

Crash scene pictures of the truck show the impact occurred on the headlight area of the passenger side of the vehicle and that Darius' body wound up many feet up the highway on the fog line. The collision's damage is to the front part of his body. One must conclude that he was walking towards the truck on the far left portion of the roadway, as he is supposed to be doing by law when having to walk on the roadway.

The weather was clear, the roadway was not slippery, the lighting was fair. At that time, there was no traffic other than a van parked in the middle of the highway, a van where Darius had left with his father just a little prior to the accident. The corrections officer noted that he had been distracted by the van's presence, saw some people outside the van, and wondered why it was parked there. This presence did not alert any possible danger to the correction's officer who never slowed down in the 5 seconds prior to impact, in fact he was in the process of accelerating to six miles over the speed limit, and plowed into the boy traveling on the side of the highway as the boy likely froze up in fear as the truck hurtled into his body.

If you are familiar with this incident by reading the Ludington Daily News report on it, you have been misinformed. Their account said there was no way the CO could have missed running into the boy, but the evidence and the CO's statement says that is not so. If he had been paying attention to the road, exercising due caution, and obeying the posted speed limit instead of driving over 60 mph, he could have easily avoided the accident.

The newspaper also reported that the Michigan State Police had been called in to investigate the accident because of the obvious conflict of interest issues that would exist if the Sheriff's office investigated this crash where one of their own was involved. The undersheriff is said to have made this statement in other news releases as well. In actuality, the MSP only assisted in a limited part in this investigation, the Mason County Sheriff's Office conducted the rest, including the taking of statements photographs, interviews, and crash reconstruction.

This obvious conflict of interest led to a very poorly done investigation on the sheriff's office part. There was no justice for Darius sought in their reports, nor is there indication of any blame at all for the seemingly negligent driver or for his impaired guardian.

His father David, who had a lengthy history of felonious domestic violence and child abuse, who had told others that he had recently purchased life insurance for this 14 year old boy he hadn't seen in two years, was never formally interviewed about what happened that night, even though by some accounts he had been on the highway with Darius at the time of the accident. His informal statements amounted to blaming Darius fully, and absolving any blame for all the adults, including himself, involved.

The investigation, fatally tainted by the conflict of interest inherent in the investigators, led to no charges pressed against the father or the corrections officer by our County's prosecutor, perhaps another conflicted interest since part of his duties is to represent and advise County personnel on legal matters. Correction officers for the jail are county personnel.

What we need is to have the investigation re-opened by a non-conflicted investigative agency and review the County's policies on how to handle such incidents in the future so that the public does not lose faith in our justice system, which has a lot less to do with 'justice' and a lot more to do with a 'system'.

The full investigation and the problems associated with it, will be released on my website, The Ludington Torch, shortly."

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My buddy, City of Ludington Daily News 'reporter' Kevin Brasizeski was at the meeting and had a funny bit in the Wednesday COLDNews paper where he said "Ludington Resident Tom Rotta, who for many months has spoken during public comment periods at Ludington City Council meetings, spoke Tuesday at the County Commissioner meeting, saying he did not like the way the investigation into a year old fatal traffic accident was handled.  It involved an off-duty corrections officer and the death of a fourteen year old Lansing boy."

I went into as much detail as five minutes would allow me and cover the topic, but I think the conflict of interest issue should have intrigued him a bit since his newspaper did report the story fallaciously COLDNews original story.  Notice that his boss, managing editor Steve Begnoche, had the byline. 

The private investigation is almost finished and will be published by the end of the weekend as soon as I wrap up and polish a couple of things.