RICHMOND, Va. -- The mother of a woman killed in a crash when a police officer sped through a busy intersection with lights flashing but no siren on asked the Virginia State Crime Commission on Monday to support rewriting the law to make it certain officers use both.
Virginia law says that in order to be exempt from certain traffic laws, such as running a red light or speeding, officers and drivers of other emergency vehicles must use their flashing emergency lights and must sound a siren, "as may be reasonably necessary."
That wording prompted a judge last fall to find Fairfax County officer Amanda Perry not guilty of reckless driving.
Cindy Colasanto, whose daughter Ashley McIntosh was killed in the February 2008 crash, asked the commission to support Sen. Linda "Toddy" Puller's bill to clear up the language to make sure officers are required to use both lights and a siren.
McIntosh, 33, was leaving a shopping center where she voted in the presidential primary when she was hit.
Perry, 22 at the time of the accident, was responding to a call about a shoplifter. A video camera mounted on her police car shows Perry make her way through traffic and two green lights with her wipers on because of the rain.
At the next intersection, it can be seen that for at least four seconds the light is red, but Perry never appears to slow down, only jerking slightly to the right just before she slams into the passenger side of McIntosh's Toyota Corolla.
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A long line of vehicles, including several SUVs, waiting to turn left into the shopping center appear to have blocked McIntosh's view of Perry's police cruiser.
"My daughter didn't stand a chance," Colasanto said after the hearing. "She couldn't hear her and she couldn't see her."
McIntosh's family also has filed a civil lawsuit against Perry, who resigned from the police department in March. The department's internal investigation of the incident had concluded and Perry was facing suspension and a transfer, department spokesman Don Gotthardt said.
A telephone number for Perry could not be found.
Several members of the commission said change was needed.
Some suggested omitting the word "reasonably" to leave it that sirens must be used unless "necessary" as a way to make it less ambiguous. That way an officer responding to an event in which discretion was needed, such as a hostage situation where the shooter was threatening to kill people if police were called, would not be forced to sound a siren.
Others suggested the commission consider different standards for intersections in rural and urban localities.
"There is a difference in an intersection in Wise County that's got a stop sign and an intersection in Fairfax County that's got roads coming from everywhere," said Gerald Massengill, a commission member and former Virginia State Police superintendent.
The commission doesn't make law, but its recommendations usually carry weight with legislators. It will vote in December whether to support changing the law.
About half the states require that officers use both lights and sirens in intersections.
Colasanto said she was encouraged that the commission was discussing the issue. Even though it is too late for her daughter, a kindergarten teacher's aide who was engaged to be married, she said it could save other's lives.
"I just think there's a need for change, and we're hoping that they will see it the same way," she said.
