Paul Thompson
Northeast News

A man driving a stolen truck fled from police and caused a fatal car crash in the Historic Northeast on Saturday, August 11.

The grey Toyota Tacoma, which police suspected had been associated with an aggravated assault the night before, fled from police and t-boned another car near the 400 block of Monroe. Samuel Delozier, 22, was arrested at the scene and has been charged with involuntary manslaughter. The victim was 32-year-old Thomas Colatrella Jr.

When officers initially attempted to apprehend Delozier, the suspect refused to stop. KCPD officers John P. Mahoney and Mathew Vaccaro recognized the suspect’s Tacoma from that day’s roll call; a handgun had been fired from the vehicle the night before. A later inquiry of the Tacoma’s VIN showed that the vehicle has been stolen from Lee’s Summit, Missouri, and a separate inquiry showed that Delozier did not have a valid driver’s license.

According to charging documents filed by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office, a pursuit was initiated. The Tacoma refused to stop, instead speeding westbound at 75 miles per hour on St. John Avenue, before turning onto Monroe. Delozier failed to heed a stop sign at Morrell and Monroe, blowing through just as a vehicle was approaching the intersection from the east. From there, Delozier continued speeding and running through stop signs. Eventually, the Tacoma turned west onto Anderson Avenue and then south onto Askew, at which time Delozier turned off his lights and and sped the wrong way down a one-way street. Turning north onto Myrtle from Garner, Delozier ran another stop sign, forcing a motorist to slam on their breaks to avoid being struck.

At the next intersection, Delozier’s erratic driving proved fatal. The Tacoma slammed into the driver’s side door of Colatrella’s passing Chevy Impala at the intersection of Smart and Monroe, pushing the vehicle into a rock retaining wall.

Colatrella, the sole passenger in the vehicle, was transported to an area hospital and pronounced deceased. Delozier was uninjured and was taken into custody at the scene.

KCPD spokesperson Sgt. Jake Becchina wrote in an email Sunday morning that the cause of the pursuit and details that followed are presently under investigation by the police department.

“It’s a terribly unfortunate situation; the loss of life in a traffic crash is always a terrible situation,” Becchina said on Monday, August 13. “We are constantly weighing the danger to the public with the need to apprehend the suspect. We take very seriously the loss of life that’s associated with that pursuit.”

Annex B of the Police Vehicle Pursuit Procedure suggests that a dozen factors are to be considered by officers before and during any pursuit. The factors include seriousness of the known violation or suspected crime, weather and road conditions, volume and speed of traffic, and the safety of the public in the area of the vehicle pursuit, among others.

Officers are directed not to initiate a vehicle pursuit unless they find “reasonable belief that the suspect vehicle or occupant(s) presents a clear and immediate danger to the safety of others.” One factor officers are asked to consider is whether the suspect has committed a dangerous felony. Becchina suggested that the aggravated assault that led to the chase is considered a dangerous felony. One passage of the pursuit policy – section C-4 of Annex B – points to the wide discretion of officers in initiating a pursuit, suggesting that the decision “…will be based upon factors known to the member at the time the member initiates the pursuit or updates received during the pursuit.”

To those who loved Colatrella, such as girlfriend April Mercer, officers should have adhered more closely to section C-3 of Annex B – which suggests that officers should not initiate or continue a pursuit when “…in the member’s opinion, the danger to the public or member created by the pursuit, exceeds the danger presented by the offender remaining at large.”

“I completely understand the severity of that, but nobody was shot,” Mercer said of the aggravated assault charge police were pursuing Delozier on. “I just don’t think they should have been going 75 MPH.”

Mercer also described the events that led Colatrella to leave the house on the night of August 11; he had left to get ice cream for her kids as a treat before bed.

“It was almost time for bed, and spur of the moment, Tom wanted to get them ice cream,” Mercer said. “He didn’t even make it three blocks.”

Mercer added that when she and Colatrella’s family found out that Delozier was only being charged with involuntary manslaughter, they were furious. According to Mercer, a supervising detective at the police department had told the family that authorities were pursuing murder charges for the suspect. Later, she found out after reading the charging documents that Delozier was being charged with involuntary manslaughter, a charge that carries a prison sentence of 3-10 years and a fine not to exceed $10,000.

“Involuntary manslaughter is ridiculous,” Mercer said. “There was nothing involuntary about what this man did.”

Colatrella is remembered by Mercer as a man who filled rooms with both his booming voice and his big heart.

“He was always loud; he didn’t have a quiet bone in his body, but he always had a huge heart,” Mercer said. “The kids were fussing that night, and he was willing to do anything to put a smile on their faces.”

Correction: The original version of this story, which appears in our paper this week, states that Samuel Delozier was 32. The charging documents correctly listed his date of birth as 9/18/95, but later listed it as 9/18/85 in the body of the same document.