Trucker gets maximum sentence for causing crash that killed five on Kansas Turnpike
A Colorado semi truck driver was sentenced to five years in the Leavenworth County jail Friday, the maximum penalty, for causing a fiery crash three years ago that killed five people on the Kansas Turnpike near Bonner Springs.
Kenny B. Ford, 59, pleaded no contest in January to five counts of vehicular homicide, which in Kansas is a misdemeanor charge. Each count carried a maximum penalty of one-year confinement.
“This is as stiff of a sentence as one can get for a vehicular homicide,” Leavenworth County Attorney Todd Thompson said in an email to The Star. “The fact that all five are consecutive would probably be one of the toughest you would see, and for good reason due to the amount of people that died and destruction to the vehicles.”
Ford’s court-appointed attorney, Ben Casad, had asked for a one-year sentence followed by a year of probation, arguing that his client had a clean record, had cooperated with investigators and was remorseful. He said Ford was careless, not reckless behind the wheel on his big rig on the day of the fatal crash.
“This is basically a negligent act,” Casad told Leavenworth County District Court Judge Gerald Kuckelman. “Obviously he didn’t intend for this to happen.”
Ford reinforced the point during the half-hour hearing in which the parties communicated through a video conferencing connection.
“This was not intentional. I didn’t mean no harm,” Ford told the judge.
But the assistant county attorney who prosecuted the case, Shawn Boyd, contended that Ford was reckless by failing to heed road signs warning of road work and possible traffic backups before his 2015 Freightliner plowed into stalled traffic near a toll booth area that was under construction.
The judge agreed, and said he felt public safety and the impact the crash had on the victims’ families had to be taken into account in passing sentence.
“This is really one of the sadder cases I’ve dealt with in years,” Kuckelman said.
While he recognized that Ford meant no harm, Kuckelman said drivers of large trucks have a great responsibility to drive safely due to the enormous destruction a heavy semi truck can cause to lives and property when not operated safely.
“Because of your failure, a lot of people are paying a price,” he said.
Each criminal count alleged that Ford drove “in a manner which created an unreasonable risk of injury to the person or property of another and which constituted a material deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would observe under the same circumstances.”
Prior to the wreck, Ford had been cited at least twice in Missouri. He pleaded guilty in 2014 to operating a commercial vehicle without proper brakes and in 2010 to failure to register a commercial vehicle in Missouri.
Ford was hauling a load for Colorado-based Indian Creek Express on July 11, 2017, when he failed to notice a traffic backup in the westbound lanes of Interstate 70 near 174th Street. His rig first rammed into an SUV driven by 61-year-old Teresa J. Butler of Urbana, Illinois.
Her vehicle spun into a retaining wall, killing her and passenger Karen Lynn Kennedy, 63, of New Palestine, Ill.
Ford’s truck then crashed into a car driven by 83-year-old Sheldon Cohen of Topeka. He and his 79-year-old wife, Virginia Cohen, died when their car hit a guardrail and ended up in a ditch.
The Feightliner then collided with another car and pushed it underneath another semi, which caught fire. The car’s driver, Ricardo Mireles, 38, Topeka, was killed.
In tears, his sister Angelica Mireles needed help reading a statement at the hearing, calling her brother “an amazing father” who won’t get to see his daughter enter college this fall. His son, who was 5 at the time of the wreck, had a hard time understanding that his father would never be coming home again, she said.
“I know Mr. Ford didn’t wake up that morning with an intent to take someone’s life, but his recklessness shouldn’t go without punishment,” she said before the judge passed sentence. “He’s change so many lives and even thinking that he may walk out of this courtroom serving little to no time is heartbreaking.”
Other survivors of the victims watched via Zoom but did not speak.
Families of the victims received an undisclosed insurance settlement and are now suing the truck’s manufacturer in federal court in Kansas City, Kan. They claim Daimler Trucks North America LLC was negligent for failing to install a collision avoidance system with automatic emergency braking on all its heavy trucks.
Ford gave no explanation for why he didn’t stop in time, but authorities said he was not impaired by drugs or alcohol.
Butler and Kennedy both worked in health care and were on their way to Colorado for vacation. The Cohens were retired Washburn University professors, and Mireles was the father of two and an avid sports fan.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 4:33 PM.
