Police Officer Arrested After Two High School Cheerleaders Killed In High-speed Crash

Two high school cheer­lead­ers from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, have been killed in a car crash involv­ing a police offi­cer who was in a high-speed pur­suit of a sus­pect fol­low­ing a home inva­sion. Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 15, were killed in the crash on Saturday night. They were stu­dents and cheer­lead­ers at Brusly High School out­side Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Liam Dunn, Maggie’s broth­er, was also in the vehi­cle at the time of the crash. He’s in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, accord­ing to People. “He will need surg­eries. Has a bro­ken femur, tab­u­la [sic], left wrist, frac­tured skull, and a few oth­er issues. We are ask­ing for prayers,” Kenny Wayne post­ed on Facebook. “We don’t know why God took our daugh­ter, but I bet she is run­ning shop up there.”

Officer David Cauthron, 42, from Addis, south of the Lousiana cap­i­tal has been arrest­ed and now faces two counts of neg­li­gent homi­cide and one count of neg­li­gent injur­ing, accord­ing to WBRZ. It remains unclear if he has hired an attor­ney to speak on his behalf. According to District Attorney Tony Clayton, the offi­cer is on admin­is­tra­tive leave. Mr Clayton said Mr Cauthron “has a lot of ques­tions to answer per­tain­ing to his speed and sheer neg­li­gence”. “For these kids to not to have been able to start the New Year is inex­cus­able, but we’ll fol­low the facts first,” he told WBRZ. “I just can’t put my arms around why (the offi­cer) was dri­ving at that rate of speed in pur­suit of this vehi­cle. This offi­cer is fac­ing some seri­ous issues.”

“If it involves putting human life in dan­ger, stop the damn pur­suit. It’s just not worth the risk,” he added. According to the author­i­ties, the crash took place as the offi­cer was chas­ing Tyquel Zanders, The Advocate report­ed. Mr Zanders was detained after his vehi­cle stalled and now faces charges of home inva­sion, theft of a vehi­cle and aggra­vat­ed flight, accord­ing to The Advocate. Brusly High School Principal Walt Lemoine said in a state­ment that the extent of the loss­es “are far-reach­ing in our school com­mu­ni­ty as Maggie’s moth­er, Erin Martin, and sis­ter, Tori Hill, work at our school. Caroline’s old­er sis­ter is a senior at Brusly High and has younger sib­lings in our school sys­tem”. “Their loss­es are sure to raise many emo­tions, con­cerns, and ques­tions for our entire school, espe­cial­ly our stu­dents,” he added. He not­ed that the school has a group of staffers to han­dle crises “com­prised of pro­fes­sion­als trained to help with the needs of stu­dents, par­ents and school per­son­nel at dif­fi­cult times such as this”. 

The cheer­lead­ing team wrote on Facebook: “As we mourn the trag­ic deaths of Maggie Dunn and Caroline Gill please keep their fam­i­lies, friends, and the BHS com­mu­ni­ty in your thoughts and prayers.” “Their enthu­si­asm and bright smiles will be missed more than can be imag­ined,” the team said. According to WBRZ, the police offi­cer was trav­el­ling at 86 miles an hour (138kph) and didn’t brake before the crash. The out­let report­ed that wit­ness­es said he ran a red light, which had been red for about 20 sec­onds before he reached the inter­sec­tion. “I want the pub­lic to have con­fi­dence in its DA’s office that we will fol­low the facts, and we should let the facts lead us to what­ev­er the out­come should be,” Mr Clayton said. Yahoo news​.com