Maggie Dunn Obituary, Death – Two innocent adolescents were killed and a police officer was arrested and faces criminal charges for a car crash that occurred as a result of the chase of a suspected car thief. This was a tragically high price to pay for successfully apprehending the car thief. The incident on Saturday took the lives of Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 16, both of whom had been cheerleaders for their high school in the town of Brusly, which is located in southern Louisiana. The deaths of these individuals are the most recent of the hundreds that occur annually as a result of incidents that involve police pursuits.
In recent years, a number of different police departments have tightened their policies regarding such pursuits. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that 455 people lost their lives as a result of police pursuits in the year 2020. The situation in Louisiana is exceptional in that the local prosecutor believes that the officer, 42-year-old David Cauthron, should be held accountable for his actions because they were so careless, and he is getting ready to ask a grand jury to decide whether or not to do so.
A man who is accused of stealing his father’s automobile was being sought by police in Baton Rouge, and authorities claim that a cop from the town of Addis named Cauthron joined the pursuit in rural West Baton Rouge Parish. The chase began when the culprit was being pursued in Baton Rouge. According to the authorities, Cauthron drove his police car through an intersection in Brusly, which is located right next to Addis.
He allegedly disregarded a red light and collided with a car that was carrying the two girls and Dunn’s younger brother, Liam, who is 20 years old and is in critical condition. Andrew Stroth, a civil rights attorney in Chicago who has handled numerous lawsuits in similar cases but is not connected to the Louisiana collision, stated that “in my experience, I have not seen a police officer charged criminally in a police pursuit case.” Stroth said this after he had handled numerous lawsuits in such cases.
