Oberle
Trusted Member
Just goes to show. . . kids, wear your damn seat belts!
I think the family sounds in the right on this one. There's no good reason that I can think of for stripping a dead car crash victim at the scene and laying her out on a tarp for a photo shoot.
On New Year’s Eve 2009, Jessica Mejia slid into the passenger seat of her ex-boyfriend’s Mercedes SUV. She wouldn’t leave it alive.
Mejia was just 20 years old, a psychology major at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her ex was Nicholas Sord, 22, the son of wealthy Chicago developer and restaurateur. Sord was just days away from opening his own restaurant with a Hall of Fame hockey player. He had already been out celebrating that night. Celebrating hard.
As Sord swerved his SUV through the south Chicago neighborhoods his father built, he suddenly lost control of the car. It smashed head first into a pole.
Neither Sord nor Mejia was wearing a seat belt. He shattered his wrist and cut his face in the crash. Mejia was not so lucky. Cook County Sheriff’s officers found her lifeless body crumpled up in the back of the SUV.
But what sets this tragic accident apart from the thousands of other DUIs around the country is what allegedly happened next.
According to a lawsuit filed in 2010 by Mejia’s family, Sheriff’s deputies pulled the dead woman from the SUV. Then they stripped off her high heels, her jeans, her shirt and her bra and laid her on a tarp. Then they took photos of her.
Mejia’s mother says she feels “violated” by the photos, which she claims were unnecessary and inappropriate.
“This was a young lady that just died and was treated with less dignity than a deer carcass you find on the side of the road,” Don Perry, the Mejia family attorney, told the Chicago Tribune.
More than five years after the horrific accident, the Mejias are finally getting their day in court. On Monday, their civil trial against the Cook County, Ill., Sheriff’s Office is set to begin. It promises to be an explosive scene, with the Mejia family essentially accusing the deputies of taking creep shots of their dead daughter.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office denies any wrongdoing. When the lawsuit was first filed, the Sheriff’s Office denied taking naked photos of Mejia at the crime scene, calling the allegations “bizarre.” Since then, however, the department has admitted that it took the photos, claiming it was “standard operating procedure” to document a crime scene.
“The family suffered an unimaginable loss, and the crime scene photos were taken as our officers investigated this crime and were instrumental in securing a conviction against the person responsible for this tragic death,” Cara Smith, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, told the Tribune. “In no way were these photos intended to cause harm to the family.”
Sord had a blood alcohol content almost three times the legal limit at the time of the crash. He was initially charged with reckless homicide and drunk driving, but the homicide charge was later dropped. He is currently serving a 56-month prison sentence, according to the Tribune.
The Mejias say the photos weren’t just a violation of privacy. By stripping the young woman, investigators contributed to rumors that she had been straddling Sord when the crash occurred. Sord’s attorney claimed that Mejia had “interfered with [Sord’s] driving to cause the accident.”
“[People] think my daughter died from having sex, not from somebody being drunk and killing her. Because they took these photos, by the time everybody else got to the scene, all the ambulances and everybody else, she was partially naked because they made her naked,” Christina Mejia told the Tribune. “So the rumors, and the allegations … they made it believable.”
The lawsuit also slams the Sheriff’s Office for allegedly exposing Jessica Mejia’s body to bystanders, in violation of departmental procedures. Sheriff’s deputies “failed to treat decedent with the dignity and the respect due her by removing her clothes, by photographing her nude body in various positions none of which were required by protocol, and by allowing passersby and other responders to view her naked person,” the suit claims.
“To see the way my daughter’s body was handled, at the scene, was so confusing and so disturbing,” Christina Mejia said. “I just didn’t understand why they did that.”
The allegations in Illinois are reminiscent of recent accusations against a California cop. Bakersfield Police officer Aaron Stringer allegedly told a police trainee that he “loves playing with dead bodies” after saying “tickle tickle” while touching the feet of a corpse.
* * *
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...fs-officers-take-creep-shots-of-a-dead-woman/
I think the family sounds in the right on this one. There's no good reason that I can think of for stripping a dead car crash victim at the scene and laying her out on a tarp for a photo shoot.
On New Year’s Eve 2009, Jessica Mejia slid into the passenger seat of her ex-boyfriend’s Mercedes SUV. She wouldn’t leave it alive.
Mejia was just 20 years old, a psychology major at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her ex was Nicholas Sord, 22, the son of wealthy Chicago developer and restaurateur. Sord was just days away from opening his own restaurant with a Hall of Fame hockey player. He had already been out celebrating that night. Celebrating hard.
As Sord swerved his SUV through the south Chicago neighborhoods his father built, he suddenly lost control of the car. It smashed head first into a pole.
Neither Sord nor Mejia was wearing a seat belt. He shattered his wrist and cut his face in the crash. Mejia was not so lucky. Cook County Sheriff’s officers found her lifeless body crumpled up in the back of the SUV.
But what sets this tragic accident apart from the thousands of other DUIs around the country is what allegedly happened next.
According to a lawsuit filed in 2010 by Mejia’s family, Sheriff’s deputies pulled the dead woman from the SUV. Then they stripped off her high heels, her jeans, her shirt and her bra and laid her on a tarp. Then they took photos of her.
Mejia’s mother says she feels “violated” by the photos, which she claims were unnecessary and inappropriate.
“This was a young lady that just died and was treated with less dignity than a deer carcass you find on the side of the road,” Don Perry, the Mejia family attorney, told the Chicago Tribune.
More than five years after the horrific accident, the Mejias are finally getting their day in court. On Monday, their civil trial against the Cook County, Ill., Sheriff’s Office is set to begin. It promises to be an explosive scene, with the Mejia family essentially accusing the deputies of taking creep shots of their dead daughter.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office denies any wrongdoing. When the lawsuit was first filed, the Sheriff’s Office denied taking naked photos of Mejia at the crime scene, calling the allegations “bizarre.” Since then, however, the department has admitted that it took the photos, claiming it was “standard operating procedure” to document a crime scene.
“The family suffered an unimaginable loss, and the crime scene photos were taken as our officers investigated this crime and were instrumental in securing a conviction against the person responsible for this tragic death,” Cara Smith, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, told the Tribune. “In no way were these photos intended to cause harm to the family.”
Sord had a blood alcohol content almost three times the legal limit at the time of the crash. He was initially charged with reckless homicide and drunk driving, but the homicide charge was later dropped. He is currently serving a 56-month prison sentence, according to the Tribune.
The Mejias say the photos weren’t just a violation of privacy. By stripping the young woman, investigators contributed to rumors that she had been straddling Sord when the crash occurred. Sord’s attorney claimed that Mejia had “interfered with [Sord’s] driving to cause the accident.”
“[People] think my daughter died from having sex, not from somebody being drunk and killing her. Because they took these photos, by the time everybody else got to the scene, all the ambulances and everybody else, she was partially naked because they made her naked,” Christina Mejia told the Tribune. “So the rumors, and the allegations … they made it believable.”
The lawsuit also slams the Sheriff’s Office for allegedly exposing Jessica Mejia’s body to bystanders, in violation of departmental procedures. Sheriff’s deputies “failed to treat decedent with the dignity and the respect due her by removing her clothes, by photographing her nude body in various positions none of which were required by protocol, and by allowing passersby and other responders to view her naked person,” the suit claims.
“To see the way my daughter’s body was handled, at the scene, was so confusing and so disturbing,” Christina Mejia said. “I just didn’t understand why they did that.”
The allegations in Illinois are reminiscent of recent accusations against a California cop. Bakersfield Police officer Aaron Stringer allegedly told a police trainee that he “loves playing with dead bodies” after saying “tickle tickle” while touching the feet of a corpse.
* * *
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...fs-officers-take-creep-shots-of-a-dead-woman/
