It’s hard to imagine that anybody less connected than former Kansas City Chiefs assistant linebackers coach Britt Reid could have admitted to having a few drinks — two or three, he said — before a crash that paralyzed a 5-year-old and yet would not have been arrested at the scene.
Reid still has not been charged, of course, nearly a month after little Ariel Young last spoke or moved or responded in any way. On Tuesday, the attorney for her family, Tom Porto, reminded the world of that fact in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
He told The Star’s editorial board that “Anybody else with two or three drinks who had Adderall on him would have been arrested right away,” and we have to agree.
“Did they have probable cause to arrest him for DUI?” Porto asked. A police officer said there was “a moderate odor of alcoholic beverages emanating from his person,” whose eyes were “bloodshot and red.” So it would seem that they did.
Ariel’s eyes are open but “that’s it,” the lawyer said. “She’s not walking, she’s not talking,” and has what doctors believe is permanent brain damage.
This is what happened after a man who’d been drinking, which you’re not supposed to do while taking the Adderall police found on him, got behind the wheel of his truck anyway. For Ariel and her family, as well as for Reid and his, the results of that decision can never be undone.
“This was foreseeable,” Porto said. “This is a bad boy,” with a history of alcohol and substance abuse and violence, and as police put it, “multiple DUI contacts” on his record.
Of course police want to make sure their lab results are right, as should always be the case. But we hope they’re not slow-walking this investigation. And they also need to make sure that they’re not giving Reid any special treatment.
The Feb. 4 crash happened just after 9 p.m., when the 35-year-old son of Chiefs head coach Andy Reid hit two cars on the side of an entrance ramp along Interstate 435 and Stadium Drive, near the team’s practice facility. Since that night, Britt Reid’s contract with the Chiefs has expired and has not been renewed.
Whatever the toxicology shows, as Porto says, “this is a guy that wasn’t looking at what was in front of him,” and so plowed into one car that had run out of gas and a second car, with Ariel and her family in it, that had come to help.
The girl’s mother told police that “as she crawled from her Chevy Traverse, she observed Reid standing looking at the vehicles and talking on his cellphone.”
She pleaded with Reid to call 911, since she had lost her phone in the crash, court records show. That should have been Reid’s first call, but at 9:11 p.m., he did as she asked, and did call for help.
“We treat each case with respect regardless of who is involved,” police said in a statement after the crash. We would love to learn that our skepticism on that point is misplaced. By all means, prove us wrong.
Meanwhile, Ariel’s mother sits by her hospital bed, praying the doctors are wrong, too.
This editorial first appeared in The Kansas City Star on Thursday. This commentary should be considered another point of view and not necessarily the opinion or editorial policy of The Dominion Post.
