I’ve been thinking a lot about Nathan Pena and his parents, Jennifer and Alex, the last several days.
I didn’t know Nathan and don’t know his parents. Nathan, 19, was a resident of Brookfield, Illinois, a western Chicago suburb. He worked at a Best Buy, ran cross country in high school, had a sister named Lauren and a cat named Cheech.
Last week he was driving to Boulder, Colorado, to visit a friend, and on the way through Kansas City he got caught up, indirectly, in a Kansas Highway Patrol chase of a KCK man with some kind of car registration violation.
Near the Kansas Turnpike Authority Terminal in Leavenworth County, the KCK man, 29-year-old Anthony Dorsey, turned around and began speeding away from his pursuers, going eastbound in the westbound lanes.
Pena had seen Dorsey’s vehicle make a U turn, and he saw the other vehicle coming toward his. He took evasive action, whipping the steering wheel to the right, toward the right shoulder and a grassy incline.
Nathan Pena
Dorsey also took evasive action, but, maddeningly, he turned the same way. His significantly larger vehicle struck Pena’s vehicle nearly head on. As usual in these kinds of cases, the slower-traveling vehicle — Pena’s — took the brunt of the crash, and Pena, who was wearing a seat belt, was killed. Dorsey — the speeding killer — was not seriously injured.
The story didn’t get a lot of play in the news columns of The Star. Thankfully, The Star came out with an editorial questioning the Highway Patrol’s decision to take up a high-speed chase over the matter of a registration violation. The editorial said, “As a general matter…concerns with a car’s registration are not sufficient reason to risk the lives of others.”
I’ll say…We hear about far too many of these cases where law enforcement officers give chase for relatively minor offenses and then the driver trying to get away ends up crashing into and killing one or more innocent people.
It’s ridiculous. The Star pointed out that the highway patrol has a good policy: It requires the responding officer to undertake a pursuit only if he or she believes the risk to the public is lower than the immediate danger from the suspect remaining at large.
At that point in the editorial, The Star editorial writer lost his or her nerve, saying, “It isn’t clear if that standard was met in this case.”
Well, I can tell you with finality — and you know it as well — the standard was definitely NOT met. No vehicle registration issue could possibly warrant a high-speed chase endangering innocent people…Now, if the runaway driver pulls out a shotgun and fires at the patrol officer, that’s a different story. But to get involved in a high-speed chase over nothing more than improper or expired registration…No way. No way!
This is heart-breaking. Nathan Pena. Nineteen. His whole life ahead of him. Couldn’t have been more than a year out of high school.
Nathan Pena was in the red vehicle.
At this writing, 40 people have posted condolence messages on the website of Hitzeman Funeral Home in Brookfield. One message, from Debby Donovan, says: “I am so terribly sorry for your loss in this tragedy. I know John and Chris (patents) and can’t believe you are going through this. My deep sympathy for the entire family and friends.”
On another website, a woman named DeAnna Scofield of Oklahoma wrote…
“I passed this accident on the east(bound) side while on a trip to Des Moines and my heart sunk seeing the wreckage. It stuck with me so much that I searched for the details today on my way home/passing the scene again. Reading about Nathan absolutely shook me to my core, as I also have a 19 yr old son who road trips to Colorado frequently. I am so sorry for your loss…I cannot even fathom the pain. I will be keeping your family in my thoughts. Such an unnecessary tragedy.”
**
As in many such cases, the driver’s life is also probably ruined. Dorsey, who is charged with first-degree, felony murder, will surely end up doing 20 or 30 years in prison. All over a stupid vehicle-registration issue.
My God, why don’t law enforcement agencies come to their senses and clamp down on these ridiculous chases over inconsequential violations? The cowboy mindset has got to go.
Note: For months, I thought the names of Nathan’s parents were Chris and John Pena. Those are his grandparents. His parents are Jennifer and Alex.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
I heard/read about this when it first happened but never got this background. Almost makes you sick to your stomach. Why is it always the good guys that take the brunt, and where *is* the outrage from the media??
Awful, just awful.
Thanks, Jim, for delving more deeply into this story. I wondered what brought Nathan Pena to Kansas, wondered if he was a university student. The Star editorial had nothing about the victim. I sent an e-mail to the pubic editor, but thus far have found nothing in print.
There’s no indication he was a KU student, Peg. My assumption is he was traveling from Brookfield, Illinois, outside Chicago to Boulder. The recommended route would have taken him across U.S. 36 to I-35 and then down to I-70. He probably had been on I-70 no more than half an hour or 45 minutes before he was killed.