Death by Cop 2021-2025
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Name Not Disclosed
Age :
Gender : Male
Race : Unknown
Date : 08/29/2022
Location : Unknown
City : Kalamazoo
County : Kalamazoo
State : Michigan
Agency : Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety
Officer(s) :Not Disclosed
Cause of Death : Vehicle
Event : Killed by police chase crash
OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :
On 08/29/2022, an unidentified driver was killed after Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety officers pursued a vehicle police believed had been stolen through Kalamazoo. The pursuit ended when the vehicle crashed with enough force to split a utility pole in half. Two passengers in the vehicle survived with injuries.
Kalamazoo police said officers encountered the vehicle and determined or believed that it had been stolen. Officers attempted to stop it, and when the driver continued driving away, police pursued. The publicly available reporting does not establish what circumstances led officers to locate the vehicle, how police determined it was stolen, or whether police were investigating any offense beyond possession of the allegedly stolen vehicle.
During the pursuit, the driver lost control and crashed into a utility pole. The impact broke the pole in half and caused extensive damage to the vehicle. The driver was killed, while two passengers were injured.
The original reporting did not disclose the speed of the police pursuit, its duration or distance, whether supervisors authorized or monitored it, whether officers considered terminating it, or how closely pursuing police vehicles were following immediately before the crash.
The identity of the person killed was not released in the original reporting. A search for subsequent reporting and later publicly indexed records did not locate a reliable later identification of the driver. Age, gender and race therefore remain Unknown rather than being inferred.
The two surviving passengers likewise were not identified in the reporting located for this update. Because they survived, they do not require separate fatality entries in the database.
The later public record remains extremely limited. No subsequent civil lawsuit, settlement, disciplinary proceeding, publicly released internal investigation, pursuit review, dash-camera footage or detailed reconstruction of the police pursuit was located. Most importantly, no later source located for this update identifies the driver or explains the police decision to continue the pursuit through Kalamazoo before the fatal crash.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND:
The Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety officers who initiated and participated in the pursuit have not been publicly identified in the records located for this update.
