By Erica C. Barnett
Content warning: This post contains descriptions of a violent, fatal traffic collision and images of a vehicle involved in that collision.
Video from the body-worn camera of Seattle Police Department officer Kevin Dave shows Dave accelerating to 74 miles an hour and failing to turn on his siren as he approached the intersection where he struck and killed pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula earlier this year. The King County Prosecutor’s Office, which is still deciding whether to charge Dave with a crime, provided the video and other documents in response to PubliCola’s records request.
PubliCola reported earlier this year, based on records we obtained through a separate request, that an SPD analysis concluded Dave was driving up to 74 miles an hour and could not have avoided Kandula, nor could Kandula have gotten out of the way, at that speed. The posted speed limit in the area is 25 miles an hour.
“I fucked up.”—Seattle police officer Kevin Dave, recorded on body-worn video after the collision
The video, which includes a clear shot of Dave’s speedometer, shows Dave going through several red lights and accelerating to 74 miles an hour before turning his wheel slightly and, in almost the same instant, striking Kandula, who can be seen briefly on the video as she passes over the windshield of Dave’s SUV.
The video also shows that Dave briefly “chirped” his siren a few times before he approached the intersection of Thomas St. and Dexter Ave. N but at no point had his siren running consistently. The audio from the body-worn camera indicates Dave may have turned his siren on in the instant before he struck Kandula.
In a statement on January, Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz said Dave was “clearing intersections with his siren” immediately before the collision.
The Seattle Police Manual says that officers engaged in emergency driving, as Dave was, must use “audible signals when necessary to warn others of the emergency nature of the situation.” In its policy on vehicle pursuits—another situation when officers might drive above the posted speed limit—the manual says officers must “use their sirens continuously to warn others of the emergency nature of the situation.”
The video also shows that Dave accelerated quickly, going from 4 to 74 miles an hour in just 12 seconds.
PubliCola is not posting the entire video; however, in the interest of transparency and access to the content described in this article, we have created a short clip of the video that begins shortly after Dave leaves SPD’s West Precinct and includes the moment of the collision. It is not graphic, but it is extremely disturbing. Please consider carefully before watching.
PubliCola also obtained three recorded statements from witnesses who saw Dave strike Kandula. In one of the recordings, the witness says he saw a police car approaching at a high speed, then heard a loud thud as the car hit Kandula. This witness did not initially mention hearing a siren. “I saw a police car coming, maybe two blocks away, and then I heard a loud sound,” he said, adding later that the reason he knew it was a police car was because “I saw light.”
“Usually when you hear that noise of a collision, of a car hitting something—a curb or something, another car—you hear brakes beforehand. Like, you hear screeching brakes and then you hear a crunch or whatever. But this time, there was no brake sound at all. It was just the sound of the front of the car hitting something.”
The interviewer asked the witness twice to describe what he heard, then asked explicitly if he heard a siren before Dave struck Kandula. “I believe I did,” the witness replied, but added, “I don’t remember” any details about it.
“I think what threw me off,” the witness continued, “was that usually when you hear that noise of a collision, of a car hitting something— a curb or something, another car—you hear brakes beforehand. Like, you hear screeching brakes and then you hear a crunch or whatever. But this time, there was no brake sound at all. It was just the sound of the front of the car hitting something.”
Another witness said she heard Dave chirping his siren intermittently before he struck Kandula.
In the moments after the collision, the video shows Dave calmly calling in the incident and immediately attempting CPR until other officers arrive to take over. Speaking to another officer minutes after the collision, Dave said, “She was in the crosswalk; she saw me. She started running through the crosswalk —I slammed on my brakes—instead of staying back where she should.” Later, Dave is crying and distraught, telling one officer he is “not okay” and muttering, “I fucked up” to another as officers try to comfort him.
“There’s nothing for me to do right now but sit. That is the fucking worst thing,” Dave says later, while sitting in the passenger seat of another officer’s SUV. “You just have sit. So many questions that are unanswered, so many questions.”
Dave’s body-worn video includes a dispatcher describing the 911 call to which Dave was responding, making it clear that the person who called for help was conscious and staying on the phone with 911 until medics arrived
After the collision, Diaz said Dave was responding “as an EMT to a priority 1 emergency call,” implying that Dave was rushing to deliver life-saving emergency care. Subsequent reporting by PubliCola revealed that the caller had, in fact, used too much cocaine and was “freaking out” but lucid and standing outside his apartment as he waited for medics to arrive.
Photos taken in the aftermath of the collision, also provided in response to our records request, show that the impact cratered the front of the SPD SUV Dave was driving, crushing its hood and shattering the windshield. The photos and video show a debris field that included Kandula’s clothing, shoes, backpack, and art supplies, including a notebook that was crushed under the wheel of Dave’s SUV.
