TX TX - Jason Landry, 21, enroute from TSU to home, car found crashed at Luling, 14 Dec 2020 #3

[#JUSTICE4WILDER]

It, for some reason has really caused me to have some resentment and doubtful feelings towards the department hearing from KL that upon his arrival he was unable to locate the actual crash site. KL has stated that within 3 hours of notification being made he traveled to Luling, TX to come find his child. KL said that the officer had to woken up from his sleep to provide a more accurate description of where this officer had found his son's totaled vehicle, personal belongings ( backpack etc ) away from the wreckage. That alone is very telling MOO to me that LEO was deliquent in their duties to JL & his family as well. Coupled with the info that I cannot discuss from the scanner. There was, IMHQ, known reason to believe this was different than other scenarios this LE dept has given to try to explain why they were sleeping instead of being at the yery least in the station awaiting KL's arrival. Imagine being woke up @ 2am with a phone call from the police informing YOU that there has been an accident involving the car registered to you that your child drives, jumping into some blue jeans & arriving to find no one with knowledge of the location around! No car once you find the correct section of SFL? Only your boys full set of clothing, underwear and all, left behind by the dude snoring!

 

[JrTex]

I’m giving LE a little bit of a pass on how this case has been handled. They admitted themselves they did not handle it as a missing person case but an abandoned vehicle situation at first. <modsnip> They had to be curious about the backpack being left and the fact that the driver obviously stripped all his clothes off in the road though. <modsnip> The front of the car looked survivable, and I bet their protocol is to just have the car towed ASAP. I think they’ve done a decent job since they realized the driver is actually MISSING. I wonder if this has ever happened before in Luling? I hope they don’t take abandoned vehicles for granted anymore. I don’t think they will.

In the time it took you to type out that paragraph, there were probably 10 abandoned and wreck vehicles in the State of Texas. I just don't think non-patrol officers/civilians grasp how common this really is. It literally happens all the time and especially late at night on the weekends through Sunday. The driver almost always calls a ride and comes back after their body has naturally rid itself of the evidence. Sometimes, too, they will go and report the car stolen.

 

[mlhenn]

In the time it took you to type out that paragraph, there were probably 10 abandoned and wreck vehicles in the State of Texas. I just don't think non-patrol officers/civilians grasp how common this really is. It literally happens all the time and especially late at night on the weekends through Sunday. The driver almost always calls a ride and comes back after their body has naturally rid itself of the evidence. Sometimes, too, they will go and report the car stolen.

I can agree with your statement but how many of those abandoned vehicles also involve personal belongings and one’s entire outfit down to their underwear and watch lying in the roadway?

 

[#JUSTICE4WILDER]

How many of these vehicles do you suppose have a full set of clothing neatly layed out feet away?

 

[#JUSTICE4WILDER]

ETA double post deleted by me

 

[happyday]

And could the reasons for towing the car asap after it was found simply be that it gives business to the tow operator and generates impound lot fees asap?

Absolutely! I think it was just business as usual—abandoned car, call for a tow, everybody goes back to work.

 

[#JUSTICE4WILDER]

Goodness..@mlhenn we think alike!

I can agree with your statement but how many of those abandoned vehicles also involve personal belongings and one’s entire outfit down to their underwear and watch lying in the roadway?

 

[10ofRods]

You are describing an inconvenience, not a threat.

Well, I never said it was a threat of any. I implied it was a hazard - which in my book is not "zero threat." Almost nothing is "zero threat" when it comes to vehicles not being where they are supposed to be. They are not supposed to be up against people's fences. Where I live, property owners would be keen to see such a car removed and expect the police to do it.

But, police officers do risk something each time they go out for a call - being called out many times for the same abandoned cards is considered a problem and a potential risk. People sometimes forget just how much risk is involved in each police call. Not all are benign, even when they appear so.

Much better to have each call wound up immediately, rather than have hours and days of repeated calls (often across jurisdictions, depending on who is calling). The vast majority of abandoned cars are just that - although criminally minded people see them as easily as firefighters do, and steal them. That creates more risk for everyone who has the job of making sure stolen cars (and the people who steal them) aren't on the road.

Luling has a fairly high rate of property crime. Why would police leave an abandoned car to its fate? Seems like they'd be making more work for themselves. If someone did steal it, they'd be a criminal and that exponentially steps up the other illegal actions they might take - having someone else's car to use in a crime is a thing. LE is trained to mitigate those risks. Not threats. Risks. But zero risk? Doesn't exist.

A firefighter called it in, because he knew it was a potential problem and a potential hazard. If the car had been leaking gasoline, as damaged cars often do, what responsible police officer would just check it out and leave it there?

And, at first, no one knew there was a missing person involved. Abandoned cars are a routine manner - and we can second guess LE's views on why they shouldn't remain where they are abandoned, but I'm not going to do that.

 

[happyday]

I can agree with your statement but how many of those abandoned vehicles also involve personal belongings and one’s entire outfit down to their underwear and watch lying in the roadway?

How many of these vehicles do you suppose have a full set of clothing neatly layed out feet away?

I’ve thought all along it’s just so weird how they picked up and took the backpack, but left the clothes in the road.

Could they have thought he might come back for his clothes so they left them right where they were dropped? I mean they were assuming there was a maybe intoxicated guy out there with no clothes on whatsoever, temps in the 30’s. I bet they left them purposely for that reason.

 

[diggndeeperstill]

Absolutely! I think it was just business as usual—abandoned car, call for a tow, everybody goes back to work.

....errr sleep

 

[kittythehare]

https://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot-info/trf/crash_notifications/2016/crash-report-100.pdf

 

[kittythehare]

This link concerns access to crash reports
Crash Reports and Records

 

[kittythehare]

In the time it took you to type out that paragraph, there were probably 10 abandoned and wreck vehicles in the State of Texas. I just don't think non-patrol officers/civilians grasp how common this really is. It literally happens all the time and especially late at night on the weekends through Sunday. The driver almost always calls a ride and comes back after their body has naturally rid itself of the evidence. Sometimes, too, they will go and report the car stolen.

Individuals and vehicle crashes are not homogenous.
Each should be investigated individually, to do anything less based upon incidence is careless if not dangerous.

 

[TruthIsStranger]

Sadly, it's probably not practical or cost effective, especially in a small town, to treat every abandoned car as a possible crime scene or missing person, especially in the middle of the night. Imagine if that were the protocol for every single abandoned vehicle--call out dogs and other cops right then and not wait until daylight? It's not realistic since we know that most of the time a) people call friends or family to get them, and b) dui folks do try to flee.

Is the officer supposed to see every single piece of debris or trash in the dark and pick it up, too? He may not have seen the clothes despite the fact that we now see it on the body camera, and even so, he didn't know it was Jason's from afar. It was far away from the vehicle, too. People dump trash and clothing all the time. The cop might also have assumed the driver lived within walking distance since it was such an out of the way destination, especially at that time of night.

Hindsight is 20/20, which is why people are cautioned from unecessary risks like driving long distances late at night, not telling their family they are coming home that night, and traveling on gravel roads when they don't need to. People have phones and gps, so it's not like the 80s when I was young and in college. Cops assume that you'll stay with your vehicle, too, if you want to be found, or that you'll flag them down in the road. This was a perfect storm of unfortunate and odd events.

Life is unpredictable, and public entities can only do so much. Do we all want to raise taxes to change how things work in case something rare like this happens? Probably not. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's just the nature of life in modern society. We do the bare minimum in terms of services to keep costs down and expect people to take precautions whenever possible. Unfortunately, young people feel invincible. I know I did.

 

[bkgregg5]

I am sure this has been discussed already and I missed it - but did anyone else notice on the NG interview that the aunt/cousin (sorry can't remember the relationship) repeated more than once that the clothes were found 900 YARDS away? I'm sorry but that is a big difference and a detail that is important. Am I the only one who noticed that? No one corrected her either time, when she brought it up, and JL's dad was on the same interview.

 

[happyday]

I am sure this has been discussed already and I missed it - but did anyone else notice on the NG interview that the aunt/cousin (sorry can't remember the relationship) repeated more than once that the clothes were found 900 YARDS away? I'm sorry but that is a big difference and a detail that is important. Am I the only one who noticed that? No one corrected her either time, when she brought it up, and JL's dad was on the same interview.

I noticed that. Wasn’t it NG who said yards first? Maybe not, but either way I never trust any of the details on NG’s show—they’re very often wrong.

 

[happyday]

Sadly, it's probably not practical or cost effective, especially in a small town, to treat every abandoned car as a possible crime scene or missing person, especially in the middle of the night. Imagine if that were the protocol for every single abandoned vehicle--call out dogs and other cops right then and not wait until daylight? It's not realistic since we know that most of the time a) people call friends or family to get them, and b) dui folks do try to flee.

Is the officer supposed to see every single piece of debris or trash in the dark and pick it up, too? He may not have seen the clothes despite the fact that we now see it on the body camera, and even so, he didn't know it was Jason's from afar. It was far away from the vehicle, too. People dump trash and clothing all the time. The cop might also have assumed the driver lived within walking distance since it was such an out of the way destination, especially at that time of night.

Hindsight is 20/20, which is why people are cautioned from unecessary risks like driving long distances late at night, not telling their family they are coming home that night, and traveling on gravel roads when they don't need to. People have phones and gps, so it's not like the 80s when I was young and in college. Cops assume that you'll stay with your vehicle, too, if you want to be found, or that you'll flag them down in the road. This was a perfect storm of unfortunate and odd events.

Life is unpredictable, and public entities can only do so much. Do we all want to raise taxes to change how things work in case something rare like this happens? Probably not. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's just the nature of life in modern society. We do the bare minimum in terms of services to keep costs down and expect people to take precautions whenever possible. Unfortunately, young people feel invincible. I know I did.

I wholeheartedly agree with most of your post, except I think they did see the clothes in the road and assumed they were the driver’s. I now am thinking they probably left them in case the driver came back for them. That would be kinda mean if they thought somebody was out there hiding from a DUI and took them anyway. I think it was probably just a routine abandoned car, driver fled, call a tow, grab the backpack with expensive, important items in it (and weed) but leave the clothes b/c that guy’s going to be cold. I think that officer got off his shift, went home & went to bed not imagining it was anything more than the usual abandoned car situation. It was several hours later when Jason’s dad arrived looking for the accident scene, so I’ll cut the guy some slack for going about his usual routine. I bet everyone involved wishes they had treated this case differently from the start—they basically admitted that, but as you said, it wouldn’t be practical to treat every case that way.

 

[happyday]

I’m reading Veta is safe but she is still listed in this article from today:

Veta Belford, 19, was last seen leaving her shift at Home Depot in Sacramento, California, October 17, 2020, after being laid off from her job. She did not have a car and left on foot. Her family says a security video outside the store captured Veta walking out of the parking lot toward Applebee’s around 3:45 p.m. Her phone has been turned off since that day. Veta is 5’4” tall, weighs approximately 215 pounds and has brown eyes and black hair. She was last known to be wearing a brownish/orange striped flannel shirt, denim pants, a rainbow ring and a small crossbody bag. Anyone who might have information about Veta’s whereabouts is asked to call the Sacramento Police Department at (916) 808-5471.
Seven years of Dateline's Missing in America: 156 still missing

Weird.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

Weird.

I made a mistake. I looked at the wrong date. It’s dated from December 2020. I’m sorry. I’m not sure

 

[bkgregg5]

I noticed that. Wasn’t it NG who said yards first? Maybe not, but either way I never trust any of the details on NG’s show—they’re very often wrong.

I don't remember who said it first, but I know the family member said YARDS at least twice. You would think that is a fact that the family member would be aware of, and not just repeating something NG said, or anyone else.