Family to sue HPD for police chase death

By Jessica Willey

(9/20/07 - KTRK/HOUSTON) - Eyewitness News has learned that the family of a woman killed in a high speed police chase is planning to sue the Houston Police Department.

It was back in April, when Rikki Sanchez, 24, an innocent bystander, was killed when her truck was hit by a fleeing suspect in a southeast Houston neighborhood.

It's been five months since we saw the mangled mess after a deadly Houston police chase. For George Sanchez, the pain is still real.

"It's been real difficult," he said.

Inside the black truck that April morning was his wife Rikki. She was his high school sweetheart and the mother of his two children.

"They miss her a lot," Sanchez said. "Every day they ask about her, we talk about her a lot."

He misses her, too. Rikki was in a quiet neighborhood, within a mile of their southeast Harris County home, when an accused car thief crashed into her as he was running from police.

"On the freeway is a different story, but in a neighborhood where there are kids, families in their yards, for them to be going at high speeds, that's uncalled for," he said.

George and Rikki's family have now filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Houston Police Department. They say it's not for the money, but for change.

According to HPD, there have been 661 police pursuits so far this year. On average that's more than two a day. Of those 216 involved collisions, 35 of those accidents involved innocent drivers and two resulted in fatalities. One was Rikki Sanchez.

"There should be a lot safer ways to accomplish a police chase than what happened to my wife," Sanchez said.

HPD's pursuit policy has been widely criticized. A review committee is currently looking into ways to change it. As it stands now, officers can chase at will.

One potential change would require a supervisor to approve a pursuit and then closely monitor it, calling it off if needed. Police Chief Harold Hurtt says the review is 90% complete, but it's taken a year and a half to get that far.

"They should have done something a long time ago," Sanchez told us. "That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. I want them to do something now. I don't want anyone else to go through what I've gone through."

Chief Hurtt says the committee has looked at chase policies in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Phoenix. The committee has looked into slow speed stopping maneuvers to end chases faster. The Chief would not give us a timeline when the review would be completed, but a union representative said it could be in a few weeks.

(Copyright © 2007, KTRK-TV)