KCK couple killed by another fleeing stolen truck. Will the Kansas Legislature act?
Mario and Delia Madruga couldn’t have seen the killer truck coming.
Society sure as heck should have.
Car thieves attempting to elude police have become a particular problem in Kansas — and on Christmas Day, a stolen pickup fleeing Kansas City, Kansas police sped through a stop sign and slammed into the Madrugas’ vehicle, killing 89-year-old Mario and 85-year-old Delia.
It was a nightmarish end to the American dream for a Cuban-born couple, who actually had to marry by proxy in 1966 after Mario’s family immigrated here, and while separated by Fidel Castro’s 90-mile wall of water. They were reunited later that year.
He worked at the Claycomo Ford Motor Company plant for more than 30 years while she made a home for their two children — their son, now a doctor in Florida, and their daughter Delia, a Wyandotte County judge and wife of Kansas City, Kansas Police Chief Michael York.
The Madrugas’ untimely deaths at the hand of a feckless, reckless thief sent not just ripples but waves through their community, particularly in the judge’s legal circles.
“You couldn’t ask for a better family,” says lawyer KiAnn Caprice. She says she is immediately mounting an effort to increase the penalties for attempting to elude police, which is currently a low-grade felony that calls for probation in most cases.
She’s not alone, as it turns out. The Kansas Peace Officers Association has been trying for several years to get the Kansas Legislature to crack down on fleeing from and eluding police, especially in cases of stolen vehicles. Thus far, it’s been to no avail. A bill died in the state Senate in 2019. A similar bill passed the Kansas House earlier this year, but died in a Senate committee when COVID-19 scuttled all non-pandemic-related bills.
Ed Klumpp, Kansas Peace Officers Association legislative liaison, said the legislation will be reintroduced in the 2021 session in January.
“People in a stolen car, they tend to be a little crazier in pursuits,” Klumpp says. “It seems to me that they’re willing to risk more in the pursuit and be more dangerous as they attempt to elude. It just seems to me the penalty for those kinds of attempt-to-eludes where a person is driving so recklessly — they’re blowing through stop signs and red lights at high speed — ought to be a much higher penalty than what it is. The risk is so, so high.”
The Kansas Peace Officers Association has tried to convey the seriousness of the problem to lawmakers: Auto thefts in Kansas rose by more than 25% from 2014-17, more than double the national increase. “Stolen vehicles also play a major role in police pursuits,” the association warned legislators in testimony last January. “At a minimum, 21% of the police pursuits in Kansas during the first nine months of 2018 involved stolen motor vehicles.”
The peace officers association merely wants attempting to elude police, which is often a misdemeanor, to be made an automatic felony when it involves a stolen vehicle. It also wants sentences for fleeing and eluding to be served consecutively with other sentences, not at the same time.
Plea bargains instead of penalties
Caprice also wants the severity of fleeing-and-eluding offenses increased to a presumptive prison offense. That may be a tall order in an era of reduced penalties to alleviate prison overcrowding. But this issue now has the attention of the highest levels of the Kansas Legislature.
“This was a tragic event, and my prayers have been with Judge York and her family,” says Kansas Speaker of the House Ron Ryckman. “I look forward to seeing what the legal community brings forward so that we can address any shortcomings in the law.”
“There’s rarely any penalty to attempting to elude in a stolen car case,” says Klumpp, “because prosecutors tend to just roll that into a plea bargain. And so nothing happens. Even if they are convicted of both, rarely is the sentence enhanced because of the pursuit.
“You know, if you had somebody going out there and just shooting a gun down the street, everybody would be in an uproar about it. This is certainly just as dangerous.”
Forgive Kansas City, Kansas police if this is a little personal for them. Not only were the Madrugas part of Chief York’s family, but the department also had an officer, Sgt. Richard James Asten, killed by a stolen vehicle in 1998.
It needs to be personal for lawmakers as well. The Madrugas could have been any of us.