U.S. cop recorded laughing after Indian student killed by police car says ‘she has limited value’.
“I think she went up on the hood..but she is dead. (laughs)”
This was the voice of Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer, recorded by a body cam.
Auderer was responding to an incident where 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula was killed near her university.
In the body cam footage, the officer was also heard suggesting that the life of the Indian student had limited value and that the city should just write a cheque.
The officer earlier said his comments were taken out of context.
Jaahnavi Kandula was a graduate student at the Seattle campus of Northeastern University.
On January 23, she was hit and killed by a police car while crossing the street.
A police investigation report said Seattle police officer Kevin Dave was driving the patrol car going 119 kilometers per hour when it hit Kandula’s body, which was thrown more than 30 meters.
And, officer Auderer was the one who was called to the incident, and his body cam recorded the audio from a call he made to another colleague named Mike Solan.
Later, it was found out that Officer Auderer was the vice president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, while Mike Solan, the colleague he was talking to on the phone, was the Guild’s president.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Police Department stated that they discovered the conversation between Auderer and Solan from an employee who listened to it in the routine course of business.
The said employee, whose name was not disclosed, was reportedly “concerned about the nature of the statements” and escalated it up to the chain of command.
The issue was handed over to the Office of Police Accountability to investigate police misconduct.
The video earned massive outrage.
Meanwhile, Jaahnavi Kandula’s family stated that they were saddened to hear insensible comments from the officers on the body cam footage.
“It is truly disturbing and saddening to hear insensible comments on the body cam video,” statement of, Jaahnavi Kandula’s family.
The Indian consulate in San Francisco also demanded an investigation.
Jaahnavi Kandula arrived in Seattle, from Bengaluru, India, in 2021, to receive a master’s degree in science in information systems at the College of Engineering. She was supposed to graduate in December of this year.
