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Name Not Disclosed

Age :

Gender : Female

Race : Unknown

Date : 09/25/2021

Location : I-135 and East Harry Street

City : Wichita

County : Sedgwick

State : Kansas

Agency : Wichita Police Department

Officer(s) :Not Disclosed

Cause of Death : Vehicle

Event : Bystander killed by police chase crash

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

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REASON FOR POLICE CHASE:
Traffic violation. Wichita police said an officer attempted to stop a vehicle for a traffic violation before the driver continued driving away and police pursued.
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EVENT NARRATIVE:
On 09/25/2021, a woman was killed in Wichita after a Wichita Police Department pursuit ended in a collision near I-135 and East Harry Street.
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According to the initial police account, an officer attempted to stop the pursued vehicle for a traffic violation. The driver continued driving away while police pursued. The available contemporary reports do not specify the underlying traffic violation, leaving unresolved whether the attempted stop began over speeding, another moving violation, an equipment violation, or another traffic offense.
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The pursuit continued through southeast Wichita before the pursued vehicle crashed near I-135 and East Harry Street, striking another vehicle. The woman in the uninvolved vehicle was killed in the collision.
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The available reporting does not provide a documented maximum pursuit speed, total pursuit distance, or a complete second-by-second pursuit timeline. It also does not report police using stop sticks, a PIT/TVI maneuver, a roadblock, or intentional police-vehicle contact before the fatal collision.
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The pursuit occurred during a period of heightened scrutiny of Wichita Police Department vehicle pursuits. Earlier in 2021, several Wichita pursuits had ended in serious or fatal crashes. In July, WPD publicly explained that its pursuit policy required officers and supervisors to continually weigh the seriousness of the underlying offense against speed, traffic, road conditions and danger to the public. The department reported that approximately 90% of its pursuits were terminated by either the pursuing officer or a supervisor and that most lasted less than five minutes and covered only one or two miles.
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WPD's pursuit policy also authorized supervisors to terminate pursuits when the danger created by continuing outweighed the need for immediate apprehension. The department had demonstrated that authority in other 2021 pursuits, including a July chase in southeast Wichita in which a supervisor terminated the pursuit when the pursued driver began entering opposing traffic.
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The woman killed in the September 25 collision was an uninvolved motorist and had no role in the police encounter that initiated the chase. The contemporary sources supplied for this reconstruction identify her as a woman but the accessible indexed material does not establish her name with sufficient reliability to replace “Name Not Disclosed.” No biographical information can therefore be safely attributed to her without risking identification of the wrong person.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND:
The Wichita officer who initiated the pursuit and the other officers who participated have not been publicly identified in the accessible contemporary reporting.
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SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article254521640.html

https://www.kwch.com/2021/07/23/wpd-explains-pursuit-policy-after-recent-deadly-crashes-chases/