Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Police Officer Fired After Killing Grad Student with Patrol Car

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Seattle's interim police chief has fired Officer Kevin Dave following a January 2023 crash that killed graduate student Jaahnavi Kandula. Kandula's death sparked major protests after another officer was heard on body camera video making callous comments about her death and a possible response by the city. Now Kandula's family is suing for $110 Million. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at Dave's firing and the suit in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/crimefix to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Fanon Rucker https://www.instagram.com/fanonrucker/CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Just write a check. Just $11,000. She was 26 anyway. She had limited value. That infamous body camera video led to one Seattle police officer's firing. And now the city has let a second officer go for a crash that hit and killed a student in a crosswalk.

I have the story and how the student's family is suing. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy. You heard those really, really terrible comments made by Officer Daniel Otterer. They were captured by his body camera and they sparked international outrage over the death of Janavi Kandula. Otterer made the comments, but he wasn't the officer who hit and killed Kandula. That was Officer Kevin Dave, and Dave has now been fired. Seattle's interim police chief, Sue Rahr, made the decision after receiving a report from the Office of Police Accountability, or OPA,

that found that Dave violated several Seattle Police Department policies, including that officers shall modify their emergency response when appropriate, officers are responsible for the safe operation of their police vehicle, officers use emergency lights for emergency response, and employees must adhere to laws, city policy, and department policy. Rahr told staff in an email announcing Dave's firing, I believe the officer did not intend to hurt anyone that night and that he was trying to get to a possible overdose victim as quickly as possible. However, I cannot accept the tragic consequences of his dangerous driving. His positive intent does not mitigate the poor decision that caused the loss of a human life and brought discredit to the Seattle Police Department.

In January 2023, Officer Kevin Dave hit and killed Janavi Kandula when Dave was driving to an overdose call. Kandula was an international exchange student studying at Northeastern University. The speedometer showed that Dave was driving about 63 miles per hour as Kandula crossed the street. Officer Daniel Otterer, the vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, was assigned to investigate whether or not Dave was impaired at the time of the collision. After a four-minute examination, Officer Otterer gets on the phone with the union's president, Mike Solon, to discuss his findings, and that discussion is recorded on his body camera. I'm sure TCIS is. And I, oh, he's good.

He says, well, normally we don't give voluntary statements. And I said, hey, you're going to have to decide if you wanted to give a statement or not, but it does not seem like there's a criminal investigation going on. Otherwise, there would be other... What's that? Otherwise, there might be other people arriving, correct? Yeah. I mean, he's going 50. That's not out of control. That's not reckless for a train driver. Yeah. Lights and sirens. But according to the OPA's investigation, Officer Dave did not activate his sirens until approximately

one second before hitting Janavi Kandula. Regardless if you're a trained driver or not, flying down the road at nearly 70 miles per hour in a construction zone with just one hand on the wheel seems kind of reckless. Kandula made it through two thirds of the crosswalk, it was a 19 foot section of it, before seeing the patrol lights. Initially, he said she was in a crosswalk. There's a witness that says, no, she wasn't. But that witness could be different because I don't think she was thrown 40 feet either. I think she went up on the hood, hit the windshield. Then when he hit the brakes, flew off the car.

But she is dead. No, it's a regular person. The force from the collision caused her to fly 136 feet in the air before she crashed into the roadway. Two hours later, after Candula was pronounced dead at Harborview Trauma Medical Center, Officer Otterer said this. Yeah, just write a check. Just $11,000. She was 26 anyway. She had limited value. I want to tell you about Upside. It's a free app that gets you cash back on things like gas, groceries, and restaurants. This is real cash back.

It's money that appears in your Upside app that you can transfer straight into your bank account. I've used Upside several times at Dunkin' Donuts when I needed a cup of tea. I claimed an offer for Dunkin' on the app, I paid as usual and followed the steps and I got cash back. It's so, so easy. You can also use Upside at places like Shell, Exxon, 7-Eleven, Chipotle, and that's just to name a few. To find out how much you could earn, click the link in the description to download Upside or scan the QR code on your screen and use our promo code CRIMEFIX to get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas. That's promo code CRIMEFIX for extra cash back. Otterer has maintained from the beginning that the joke was taken out of context,

that he was really mocking city attorneys. Kandula's death and the body camera footage led to protests. People were outraged at how she was killed and at Auderer's comments. King County prosecutors did not file felony charges against Dave, citing insufficient evidence to prove that he was consciously disregarding safety. Dave was cited and fined $5,000 for negligent driving by the Seattle City Attorney's Office. Dave contested the fine, but later agreed to pay it. A Seattle police detective determined the proximate cause of this collision was the speed at which Officer Dave approached the intersection of Dexter Avenue, North, and Thomas Street. Officer Dave accelerated to 74 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone while headed to an emergency call. Candula entered the crosswalk and had the right of way when the Ford was about 475

feet to the south of the intersection. The speed at which Officer Dave was traveling did not allow Kandula or him sufficient time to detect, address, and avoid a hazard that presented itself. The King County Prosecutor's Office also hired a third party to investigate. They found that Officer Dave is the proximate cause of the collision. He had accelerated to about 74 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone while responding to an emergency call. The high speed and narrowed lane of the travel did not provide for a reasonable escape route or the possibility of reacting and avoiding the hazard presented by Ms. Kandula. Part of what I just read to you came from a

lawsuit filed by Kandula's family. They're asking for damages of more than $110 million. Kandula's parents make a number of claims, including that Dave didn't even have a valid driver's license. The suit says, on January 23rd, 2023, the day of the collision, defendant Dave did not possess a valid Washington driver's license. Defendant Dave should not have been operating a patrol vehicle on the streets of Seattle without a valid Washington driver's license. And there are some stunning allegations about Kevin Dave's past employment as a police officer in Tucson, where Kandula's parents say he had been fired for poor performance and misconduct. And they say Seattle PD knew that. The suit says,

SPD officials knew that defendant Dave had been involved in at least one preventable collision prior to his termination from the Tucson Police Department. SPD also knew that he had been involved in another collision that he failed to report. The Tucson Police Department personnel file states, my concern is that officer Dave is not making sound decisions and may be distracted by other issues at work or off duty. The suit also claims that Officer Dave had previously been investigated

in Tucson for driving while impaired. The suit states, SPD officials knew that Defendant Dave fled from Tucson police on or about July 2nd, 2014. Defendant Dave hid his uninsurable vehicle in an alley and lied to police when he was apprehended. Tucson police investigated defendant Dave for suspicion 911 caller was waiting outside the address for the police to arrive at a lower Queen Anne address. The lawsuit also claims Officer Otterer didn't properly investigate drug recognition test when he failed to administer any type of breathalyzer or blood test to determine whether defendant Dave was impaired. Instead, Officer Otterer looked at defendant Dave and determined based upon his visual examination alone that defendant Dave was not impaired. Janavi Kandula came to the U.S. in 2021 to pursue her master's

degree at Northeastern's College of Engineering. She would have graduated this past December. Her peers described her as a young soul full of dreams and hopes who believed her future was a shining light, cruelly extinguished. I want to bring in Fanon Rucker. He is a plaintiff's attorney at the Cochran firm in Ohio. And this is just the kind of case where he would represent a plaintiff in it. So, Fanon, I want to get your first thoughts on this case. And first of all, your thoughts on the officer being fired. Well, so much to unpack. And again, thank you, Internet, for having me on. You know, there's so much to unpack here. I mean, we're talking

about a lawsuit that was filed, a wrongful death action, personal injury. We're talking about a case against the city for negligently creating this sidewalk that led to the potential for this crash. We're talking about an unemployment issue, or rather an employment lawsuit, because the officer who got fired sued saying he was being targeted, even though he did some stuff that every single person who heard it gasps and says how outrageous and extreme was that comment in response to this situation. So the officer who actually was driving the vehicle, who tragically struck and killed this young lady, was terminated. And he was terminated because, according to the independent investigation, and two years after the incident happened them to decide that this action justified some type of action against this officer. But ultimately, the right result, I think, according to the policy violations, absolutely.

Yeah, it did seem to take a long time. And the other officer, Daniel Oderer, he had already been fired for some remarks that he made on the body camera footage, which are just unbelievable. But back to now the civil lawsuit that has been filed by the family of the victim in this case. They make a number of allegations. And it's surprising to me if all of the things they say are true, that this guy worked in Tucson, he didn't have a valid Washington driver's license, which is unbelievable, and that he had all of these issues as a police officer in Tucson. It's stunning to me that he was even hired in Seattle. That's right. If, as they allege, and I have to believe that they did due diligence

before making such allegations and they have support for those allegations, if it's as they allege, that is pretty unbelievable that this officer, who also was terminated or was disciplined for a prior car crash while he was with that other police department some years ago that he was hired by this police department. And as you said, that he was operating a police vehicle, a city issued service vehicle without a valid driver's license when this incident happened. And he wasn't an officer on his first day when this happened with this police department. But, you know, these cases are very difficult and they're very difficult for a lot of reasons. Every state that I'm aware of, including where we are,

has a requirement or has what's called immunity for officers who are on something called an emergency run. Normally it means that they are responding to an emergency situation. And that can be a pretty expansive definition. It could be they're responding to a call for, you know, a shooting. Or it can be that they got a call about a car accident and they were rushing to that car accident. Pretty expansive.

But if they are running their lights and their siren, normally they are immune from liability for injury or death that occurs as a result of that emergency run. Now they have some things that take it outside of that. And that's where we as lawyers look for taking an outside of that statute. But here, apparently they have the same exact immunities in their statute as most other states do.

You know, I would think that this lawsuit, I mean, the facts are pretty straightforward here. I mean, this guy was going to an overdose call. Her family claims, Janavi Kandula's family claims that the person who apparently overdosed was up and standing up and outside the house. I mean, this wasn't like an overdose where somebody was laying on the ground inside and things like that. I mean, he's going really fast, 74 miles per hour, 63 when he hits her in this kind of construction area. I mean, the facts are pretty stark in this case. They're pretty straightforward. Do you see the city? I mean, they're going to have to go through this, you know, the discovery and all of this stuff. Do you see this even going to trial?

Because it seems pretty straightforward. Yeah. So interestingly, what's also available as a defense for municipalities is essentially this argument that, hey, we agree. The officer was off the chain and acting outside the scope of his training. And we agree that that was criminal and bad. That's why we fired him. So we're not paying a dime for this. You know, and I think that's one of the reasons that they also strategically found a way to include the city separately for liability, as opposed to just the officer and the officer's actions. You know, it seems straightforward. And again, as citizens, we look at it and we gasp and we think, well, clearly this officer, this police department

is on the hook. But what we've seen is one side of the story. We don't know the other side's argument or what they're claiming. Well, we do get a little hint because one of the arguments that they make is that there were witnesses that observed the young lady rushing to try to beat the officer, meaning she knew that the officer was coming down the street and she rushed and darted out in order to try to beat him. And she didn't because he was going 74 and a 25. That's going to be one of the defenses they put forward. Will that mitigate their losses? Perhaps. Will it be enough that they say, yeah, but if this gets in front of a jury, we're going to get blasted. So let's go ahead and let's try to settle this thing out before we actually go to trial.

Yeah. I mean, it's a heartbreaking case. I mean, Janavi Kandula was a grad student. I mean, studying here from India. I mean, it's just it's heartbreaking. One hundred ten million dollars. I mean, is that a is that a pretty large sum of money to request in a civil suit such as this one? Well, I think the purpose of making specific requests like that under normal circumstances is for the shock value of it. In Ohio, for example, if you're asking in anything other than a contract action, if you're asking for anything

more than $25,000, all you do when a complaint, according to our rules, is say greater than $25,000. But what do we do to make it more salacious and to make it more compelling is we include $50 million plus $11,000, because that's the comment that the officer who was in the police car made as he was responding to investigate whether the officer actually was under the influence. So 110 million. Yeah. How do you how do you justify such a number? civil rights cases, any case where a person's life is lost, or even where a person's, I don't know, character or body is injured, one of the most difficult things to do is to put a value on that person's life. It is extremely difficult. If it was one of my family members, and I've had to argue this before, if it was one of my family members, there is no dollar amount that would be justifiable that we could receive or that would compensate their loss. Because to me, they were invaluable. The law, however, says

we have to look at how much they would have earned in their lives. We have to look at what were their medical bills, what are their medical bills going forward, and what may be their long-term care. I mean, those are the things that you look at from a realistic standpoint. You argue punitive damages, and those could be anything, but the $110 million, it is what we recognize it is, and that is for attention and to drive the screws to what has been determined to be wrong by these actors who we hear on video and whose reports we have seen and investigations have been concluded. Well, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Fanon Rucker, plaintiff's attorney out of Ohio with the Cochran firm, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.