It was an odd occurrence for Washington State Patrol to mistake Travis Williams’ fatal motorcycle crash this month for an abandoned vehicle. And Williams’ family finding his body three days later raised questions about WSP’s process.
But on Thursday, the family of a different crash victim from June announced the State Patrol had made a similar mistake.
WSP announced Friday that troopers are forming a committee to better handle similar situations that require a more investigative element. But spokesman Trooper Will Finn also said the scenarios require different fixes from the State Patrol’s methods, even if they appear similar.
Steven Krieger, 24, was killed June 1 after his car crashed on Highway 14 on the Vancouver-Camas border at around 3 a.m. But WSP did not find his body after searching the area with thermal imaging and floodlights. The State Patrol later reported his body was found on the other side of the highway. His family had filed a missing person report after he did not show up for his job as a volunteer firefighter and EMT that night.
Krieger’s mother, Rachel Broersma, told KPTV on Thursday that the night after Krieger crashed, the family went to the crash scene and searched for him, but the Washington State Patrol soon arrived and sent them home, saying it was unsafe to be on the side of the highway. Half an hour later, Broersma said she believes WSP then found Kreiger’s body and alerted the family.
But Finn said that WSP had already found Krieger’s body at that point, but didn’t want to tell the family on the side of the highway.
“We had already found (Krieger). We don’t like to make notifications on the side of the road. We wanted to bring them back to the office … so we could have that delicate conversation with them,” Finn said.
Finn said WSP was contacted by the dispatch agency, CRESA, at about 11 p.m., alerting WSP to Kreiger’s missing person report. Finn said troopers then went back to the scene, but found the family searching for him.
Finn said both victims would have died regardless of the State Patrol’s search efforts.
The biggest issue in the Krieger case, Finn said, was a deficiency in communication between two agencies: The dispatch agency, CRESA, which receives the missing person report, and WSP, which didn’t know about the Kreiger’s missing person report until about 20 hours after the crash.
But the issue in Williams’ case was that the responding trooper didn’t realize it was a crash because the motorcycle was leaned against the side railing — an odd occurrence.
“We’ve got a communication lapse within the chain,” Finn said.
Finn said he can’t recall any obvious cases similar to Williams’ and Krieger’s.
Finn said WSP established a committee in response to both families’ dissatisfaction. The committee aims to better address the investigative process issues that led to both events. The first meeting will take place Monday to develop scenarios for troopers responding to similar scenes, and figure out how to better communicate with families and partner agencies, like CRESA.
The Williams family agreed to go over the findings of the committee and let them know if anything is missing or if things are improving, according to Finn.
The State Patrol also held a regional meeting on Wednesday to talk about the issues, Finn said.
“We are committed to making these changes,” Finn said.
