Video of Seattle police laughing after University student Jaahnavi Kandula is killed by cop car goes viral
The bodycam footage of a Seattle police officer laughing after a 23-year-old Indian-origin Northeastern University student was struck by a cop car in January this year which killed her, went viral. Officer Kevin Dave was reportedly speeding while driving his patrol car when he hit graduate student Jaahnavi Kandula, who was crossing the road in…
The bodycam footage of a Seattle police officer laughing after a 23-year-old Indian-origin Northeastern University student was struck by a cop car in January this year which killed her, went viral.
Officer Kevin Dave was reportedly speeding while driving his patrol car when he hit graduate student Jaahnavi Kandula, who was crossing the road in South Lake Union. Dave was driving the marked patrol SUV northbound on Dexter Avenue North when he responded to the Seattle Fire Department’s “priority one call.”
An investigation was launched against Seattle police union leaders after the incident. The Seattle police department released the bodycam footage “in the interest of transparency.” The footage was from Seattle Police Officers’ Guild Vice President Daniel Auderer’s bodycam.
In the video, Auderer was seen calling the guild’s president, following the accident. He can be heard saying, “She is dead” before bursting out into laughter. He called Kandula “a regular person” and through bursts of laughter, added, “Yeah, just write a check. Eleven thousand dollars.”
The clip concluded with him saying: “She was 26 anyway, she had limited value”, which meant that he got the victim’s age wrong.
The Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC) issued a statement Monday following the release of the video. The CPC called the conversation between Auderer and his colleague, “heartbreaking and shockingly insensitive.”
“The people of Seattle deserve better from a police department that is charged with fostering trust with the community and ensuring public safety,” the CPC added.
The Seattle police department has refused to comment on the matter until the Police Accountability Office wraps up its investigation into the incident. In the preliminary investigation, Auderer reported that Dave was driving his car at 50 mph and was not “out of control.” However, the police investigation eventually found that the car was being driven at 74 mph when it hit Kandula.
