There have been four accidental
shootings involving children in recent weeks. In two of those cases, the
victims where the children of police officers. Now there are questions as to
whether the officers in those cases are getting preferential treatment.
Snohomish County prosecutor Mark Roe
says he's received calls and emails from the public as to why he hasn't filed
charges against Marysville police officer Derek Carlile. Carlile's daughter was
shot and killed in the family van by a sibling on March 10th. The kids had been
left unattended in the car, and somehow the gun was left in the car as well.
"What somebody else does in
another case, in another city, involving other people, the facts of which I'm
not familiar with, are pretty hard to compare," said Roe.
Lt. Brent Speyer, with the Snohomish
County Sheriff's Office, says homicide cases take time and they hope to hand
the Carlile case over to the prosecutor's office in approximately two weeks.
Both Speyer and Roe say conducting a thorough and unbiased investigation is of
the utmost importance.
Yet other jurisdictions have handled
similar cases in far less time. Pierce County prosecutors have filed second
degree manslaughter charges against a couple who left a 3 year old boy in a car
with a gun. The boy shot and killed himself while the couple was out of the
car. It took prosecutors two weeks to file charges.
Spokane police are under fire for
waiting two days to disclose an accidental shooting involving one of their
officers. Officer Barry O'Connell's ten year old daughter accidentally shot
herself in the leg on Easter Sunday. Police did not disclose the incident until
Tuesday, saying they wanted to give investigators time to handle the case
without distraction and give O'Connell's family time to take care of their
daughter.
"I can't compare this to any
other incident because I don't know the facts and circumstances of those
incidents," said Lt. Speyer. "But this is consistent with the length
of time it takes to investigate something like this."