By Nicholas J.C. Pistor St
The Louis Post-Dispatch
COLLINSVILLE, Ill. — The Illinois state trooper who lost control of his squad car, resulting in the death of two teenage sisters, may have turned off his in-car video taping system before the crash, State Police told the Post-Dispatch Thursday.
State Police now say that particular trooper’s taping system was supposed to come on automatically when the emergency lights were activated.
The disclosure is an about-face for the State Police, who said at a news conference last week that the police cruiser had an older video taping system that must be turned on manually.
“We had inaccurate information,” said Lt. Scott Compton, an Illinois State Police spokesman.
Still, there’s no video of the moments leading up to the crash when police say trooper Matt Mitchell was headed to the scene of another incident. That’s when State Police say a car cut off Mitchell, causing him to drive into the Interstate 64 median and into oncoming traffic.
The two sisters killed in the Nov. 23 crash were Jessica Uhl, 18, a graduate of Collinsville High School who was attending Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and Kelli Uhl, 13, an eighth-grader at Collinsville Middle School. The two had just attended a holiday family photo session before the accident.
Mitchell remains hospitalized. Because of that, police say they haven’t had an opportunity to properly question him about the accident.
“We’re trying to determine why there’s no video,” said Compton.
However, he stressed that Mitchell wasn’t required to have the video recorder on. State Police only require video to run during so-called “enforcement action,” during an arrest or traffic stop.
The video comes on automatically with the activation of the emergency lights. But police say the lack of video doesn’t mean the trooper failed to turn on his lights.
Larry Trent, the State Police director, said last week more than half of the 70 people interviewed said they saw lights and heard a siren.
Compton said there are several scenarios to explain the lack of video. The trooper, he said, could’ve already had his lights on from a previous traffic stop. Or, he could’ve turned the video off before his squad car started moving.
Last week, the State Police revealed that Mitchell was in two previous crashes: A single-vehicle crash in 2002 with no injuries, and a 2003 crash that resulted in a $1.7 million judgment.
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch