WPBN: In 2023, a graduate student from Northeastern University who was located in India was struck and killed by a patrol car driven by a Seattle police officer. This week, the police reported that the individual has been terminated from his position.
On January 23, 2023, Jaahnavi Kandula was crossing the street at a crosswalk when she was struck by a police vehicle operated by officer Kevin Dave. Dave had been responding to a complaint of an overdose at the time of the incident, according to a prior article from the Seattle Times, which cited police. After some time, the 23-year-old passed away in the hospital.
In a statement, Interim Chief Sue Rahr of the Seattle Police Department stated that she made the decision to terminate Dave’s employment on January 6th, after discovering that he had broken four policies of the police department, one of which being the requirement that he be aware of how to safely operate a police vehicle.
According to a police report from June 2023 that was published by KIRO-TV, Dave had been traveling at 74 miles per hour over the speed limit of 25 miles per hour when he hit Kandula while he was on his way to the emergency call.
The speed that Dave was traveling at “did not allow him sufficient time to detect, address, and avoid a hazard that presented itself,” according to the written report.
“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,” Rahr stated. “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,” she continued.
After conducting an investigation into the matter, the King County Prosecutor’s Office made the decision not to press criminal charges against Dave throughout the course of the previous year. According to a case memo, they stated that there was not enough evidence to indicate that Dave was “consciously disregarding safety.”
Based on the information provided by Fox 13, Dave was subsequently charged with careless driving in the second degree by the Seattle City Attorney’s Office and given a fine of $5,000 for the civil offense.
When another police officer, detective Daniel Auderer, was recorded on body-camera footage released by the department joking about the event, the case became widely publicized and garnered a lot of attention.
Before laughing, Auderer can be heard on the video saying, “She has passed away.” Additionally, it was possible to hear him referring to Kandula as “a regular person” before he proceeded to say, “Yeah, just write a check.”
Continuing, he stated, “$11,000. In any case, she was 26 years old. “Her value was relatively low,” he stated in the video that was made public.
When Dave hit Kandula, Auderer was the drug-recognition officer who was tasked with determining whether or not Dave had been under the influence of drugs for that moment.
According to reports from Fox 13 and KOMO, attorneys for Kandula’s family have subsequently filed a lawsuit against the city and Dave, stating that she “experienced terror, severe emotional distress, and severe pain and suffering before she passed away.”
After Kandula’s passing, those who were close to her referred to her as a “brilliant student with a bright future.”
“Jaahnavi cared deeply for her mom,” organizers said in a GoFundMe campaign created at the time. “So much so, that in spite of severe homesickness, she came to the States to pursue her dreams and to create a better future for her mom & sister.”
