Melissa Kennedy never imagined she’d be caught up in a controversy unfolding in a town more than 750 miles away from her home in the Sunnyside neighborhood.
But when the Vancouver woman’s daughter was shot and killed by police in Utah nearly two years ago, her world shifted.
“I never thought I would be in this situation. … I always lived in my little bubble,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy’s daughter, Danielle Willard, was living in Utah after completing a drug treatment program. While parked in her car, Willard was approached by two undercover police officers. She tried to drive away when the officers shot and killed her on Nov. 2, 2012.
“Once they killed my daughter, they broke my bubble,” Kennedy said. “You don’t kill my daughter on my watch and get away with it.”
On Thursday, the Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill announced that the officer responsible for firing the fatal shot will face a charge of second-degree manslaughter.
Kennedy said that from the moment she learned how her daughter died, she had thought the officer had acted recklessly. So when she heard Thursday’s news, she burst into tears.
“There’s a very big sigh of relief there,” she said “It makes me feel good knowing I pegged it right on, even though I didn’t have any proof.”
But her quest remains unfinished. In the midst of a lawsuit against the West Valley City and its police department, Kennedy said that she hopes to make changes to what she calls a corrupt police system. Even though she’s traveled to Utah a dozen times in the past two years and spent $10,000 on lawyer fees, Kennedy said she’s not going to give up.
“Danielle keeps me going. I’m not going to stop,” she said. “I’ve got to keep going. I have to help others.”
Ending up in Utah
Before she moved to Vancouver, Willard attended Gresham High School in Oregon. During her teenage years, Willard fell in with a group of friends who drank alcohol, Kennedy recalled. Her daughter, a 5-foot 7-inch outgoing brunette who played varsity soccer, joined in. Her drinking eventually turned into drug use — first marijuana, then heroin. Before long, she was addicted.
When her daughter confessed her habit to her mother, Kennedy got to work. She twice sent Willard to drug treatment facilities in the area, but when those didn’t work Kennedy sought the help of a placement company — one that would help her find a drug treatment program better suited to Willard’s recovery needs.
Through that process, they found Pathways Real Life Recovery near Salt Lake City.
There, Willard was assigned three counselors to help build a life free of drugs.
“You have to relearn how to live: how to budget, how to cook, how to clean up,” she said. “You wouldn’t think at age 21 that you’d have to go through that kind of stuff, but they did a great job.”
When Willard completed the 90-day program in June 2012, Kennedy worried that her daughter would be tempted by her old life if she returned home to friends. The two talked and decided Willard should stay in Utah.
On the day she was killed, 21-year-old Willard had left work early, telling her co-workers that she was putting a deposit on what would be her first apartment all to herself.
“She left work at 1:09 that day. Within 20, 25 minutes she was pronounced dead,” Kennedy said.
Into the path of police surveillance
The apartment complex where Willard was killed was not the same one she was setting herself up to move into, Kennedy said.
When Willard pulled into the parking lot of the apartment, she fell under the watchful eyes of West Valley City Police Detectives Shaun Cowley and Kevin Salmon who were conducting surveillance as part of a drug investigation.
The officers said they saw a man leave an apartment, get into Willard’s parked Subaru and then return to the apartment a short time later. Suspecting drug activity, they approached her vehicle and demanded that she open her door, but Willard didn’t comply, according to the district attorney. Both officers then drew their guns and tried to break the vehicle’s windows. When that didn’t work, Cowley walked to his car to get something that would break the glass.
Then, Willard reversed her car. Accounts differ on whether Cowley was struck or brushed by Willard’s Subaru, but both men fired at Willard. Cowley fired the bullet that fatally struck Willard in the back of the head.
“She must have been so incredibly scared and confused,” Kennedy said. “She had no clue what was happening. I was so far away that even if she picked up a phone to call me, which she would have if she was in trouble, I couldn’t be there. Mommy couldn’t be there for her.”
When police later searched Willard’s car, police said they found drugs.
“I don’t care if she was doing drugs or not, or if she was dealing drugs. She didn’t need to die that way,” Kennedy said.
And the authorities agree.
Though Cowley claimed he feared for his life when he saw the vehicle backing up, the Salt Lake County district attorney determined that both officers were unjustified in the use of deadly force. The officers’ accounts of what happened were not supported by forensic evidence collected at the scene, according to the district attorney.
Long before the DA’s decision, which was made in August 2013, the Utah police agency had already started to unravel.
In December 2012, the West Valley City Police Department disbanded its narcotics investigation unit over “concerns,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The investigation resulted in discipline for its detectives and hundreds of criminal cases being dismissed.
Cowley was fired, not for the shooting but for mishandling evidence found in his car after the shooting. He’s been fighting his termination and has an appeal hearing scheduled for Aug. 25.
The FBI launched an investigation into whether there was a cover-up into Willard’s shooting death. FBI spokesman Bill Facer said he couldn’t comment on the ongoing investigation.
Kennedy has filed a wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit against Detectives Cowley and Salmon; the narcotics investigation unit supervisor, Lt. John Coyle; then-Police Chief Thayle “Buzz” Nelson; and West Valley City.
She has recruited the help of Geragos & Geragos, a well-known firm that has represented such celebrities as Michael Jackson and Chris Brown. Kennedy said she hopes her case leads to big changes in terms of how police conduct themselves in Utah.
Her motivation to keep fighting, she said, is her daughter.
She said her daughter’s spirit helps her keep fighting, though she knows there will always be a void in her life.
“No matter what we do or no matter how hard we fight, I still don’t have her back,” Kennedy said. “That’s what really hurts.”
The Salt Lake Tribune contributed to this report.
