KANSAS CITY, Mo — Kansas City Police spent the early morning hours working a traffic accident in which a KCPD department employee was killed. Michael Chou, 29, a crime scene technician with the department was pronounced dead at the scene.
The wreck happened early Saturday around 3 a.m., and one officer told FOX 4 News it was one of the worst she’d ever seen.
The scene of the crash was less than a block from the department’s crime lab — on Troost Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets. When officers arrived, they discovered that one of the lab’s civilian employees had been killed in the accident.
“He’s a part of our family,” said KCPD Sgt. DeEtta Jacobs.
Jacobs works with the department’s accident investigation unit. Jacobs said the crime lab employee pulled out of the lab’s parking lot in his Honda sedan, and was hit by a BMW sedan, which was going so fast, it cut the Honda in half.
“It’s one of the most significant splitting of a car that i’ve seen,” Jacobs explained. “Usually, when they split, they don’t travel — the two pieces — I haven’t seen them travel that far apart.”
Sgt. Jacobs says a KCMO police officer saw the BMW speeding, and followed that car to the scene of the wreck. The driver of the BMW ran from the scene, but police eventually caught up with him. Jacobs said she has worked many accidents, but this one is hard for these officers since many of them know the man who was killed.
“It’s definitely different when you know the person, because you remember them alive and you have those those things to draw upon, whereas when it’s someone you don’t know, you focus strictly on the evidence not the loss,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs explains that’s why officers from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department were brought in — to guard against any potential conflicts of interest in the investigation.
Police haven’t released the name of either driver — that of the man driving the BMW or the crime lab employee who was killed in the accident.
65th and 66th Streets near Troost Avenue were closed for about six hours Saturday morning.
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