• 31
  • August
    2011

An appeals court in Texas has ruled that the city of Dallas - and Dallas Police Officer Juan Rangel (who recently received the medal of valor after a shootout that occurred late last year, as Robert Wilonsky reports for the Dallas Observer - is immune against a wrongful death lawsuit involving Rangel and 51-year-old Patricia Brooks, who was killed crossing the street.

Officer Rangel was responding to a situation involving a "combative, suicidal person," as Wilonsky reports, when he struck and killed Brooks, who was crossing the street in an apparently unlighted, "isolated" part of town, wearing dark clothing.

Rangel stated that she appeared "out of nowhere," and that the manner in which he drove his squad car was not risky.

Rangel's colleagues have supported this. "In the city of Dallas, the normal flow of traffic on a regular basis tends to be above the speed limit."

This, of course, probably played a limited role in the appeals court ruling, which affirmed governmental immunity when police officers cause accidents in the course of performing their duties as cops.

Source: Dallas Observer, "Appeals Court Dismisses Case Against City Involving Pedestrian Killed by DPD Officer," by Robert Wilonsky, 08/31/11