By JASON MEISNER
Chicago Tribune
GARY, Ind. — A Gary, Ind., father who found his teenage son and his son’s friend dead at the scene of an accident that he said happened seven hours earlier claims police overlooked the bodies when they investigated the crash.
Arthur Smith said police failed to search the woods for his son, Brandon, 18, and his friend, Dominique Green, 18, even though the driver of the car in which they had ridden told investigators at the scene that the two had been ejected from the car.
“If they would have just taken any initiative at all, they would have found them,” Smith said. “They didn’t use proper procedure.”
Gary police referred all questions about the crash to Cmdr. Sam Roberts, who did not return repeated phone calls Saturday. The Lake County Coroner’s Office confirmed the two victims were found in a wooded area off Chase Street about 9:30 a.m. Both had been ejected in a motor-vehicle accident and died of multiple blunt-force injuries, a coroner’s office spokesman said.
The bizarre chain of events began about 2:30 a.m. Saturday, when Brandon Smith, Green, and two other friends were coming home from a CD release party, said Arthur Smith, who based his account on what the driver of the car, Darius Moore, told him.
The driver lost control of the car and it crashed through a guardrail in the 2700 block of Chase Street in Gary, rolling down an embankment and coming to rest in a wooded area about 100 feet off the road, Smith said.
Moore was able to free himself from the wreckage, climb the hill and flag down a motorist, who called 911, Smith said. Gary police, firefighters and paramedics responded, treated the driver and had to extricate another victim from the front passenger seat, Smith said.
“All the time [Moore] was telling them there were two other individuals in the car, and they must have been thrown out, but they kept saying, ‘There’s no one here,’” Smith said.
Smith said he first heard of the accident early Saturday morning when the driver’s mother called and told him her son’s account of Brandon Smith and Dominique Green missing at the scene. He said at first he thought the driver was just mistaken, and that the two had left the party in a different car.
It wasn’t until about 9 a.m. when someone called him and said the car was being towed out of the woods that Smith said he decided to drive over to Chase Street with two other relatives “just to take a look at the scene.”
He said he was able to follow the path of the car down the embankment and could see where it had come to a stop. As he kept walking, he said, he stepped on a shoe that was on the ground and picked it up. Farther into the woods, Smith spotted another area where the weeds looked tussled, and he stood on a tree stump to get a better view.
“That’s when I witnessed my son lying there all twisted up against a tree, and about 10 feet away there was the other boy,” Smith said. He said he called police immediately, and when they arrived, they would not discuss whether the woods had been thoroughly searched.
Smith said police were more concerned about the shoe he had picked up in the woods and was still clutching in his hand.
“The only thing they said to me, and it was in a messed-up tone, was, ‘Where did you get that shoe from?’ and, ‘You better put it back about where you found it,’” Smith said. “I threw it at them. I said, ‘I’m looking at my son and his friend dead and you’re worried about where I found a damn shoe?’”
Moore was still hospitalized Saturday night but did not suffer life-threatening injuries, according to Smith. The other passenger was reportedly in critical condition, he said.
Green’s father said in a telephone interview that he was unaware his son had been killed until Smith notified him Saturday morning.
Willie Green said he did not know where his son was coming from or who else was in the car.
Smith said Moore was issued a citation at the scene.
“To me that was total negligence,” Green said. “If you can take the time to issue a citation, you can take the time to look around and see if there’s anybody else there.”
Smith said his son and Dominique Green were both seniors at West Side High School in Gary.