The numbers tell us just about everything we need to know about Britt Reid’s awful tailspin back into bad judgment and brain-clouded driving.
Reid was driving 83 miles an hour — 18 miles an hour over the speed limit — when he crashed into two cars stopped in the emergency lane when he was preparing to merge onto southbound I-435, near Arrowhead Stadium, the night of Feb. 4.
Worse than the speeding, though, was his blood alcohol content. Two hours after the crash, it was 0.11%, well over the legal limit of 0.08%.
The crash left 5-year-old Ariel Young with a traumatic brain injury — an injury that will probably significantly reduce the quality of her life from here on out. A KSHB-TV story says Ariel, now out of the hospital, is unable to walk or talk and has to be fed through a tube in her stomach. An attorney representing the family said, “She’s a 5-year-old, but she’s functioning like a baby.”
This is profoundly, maddeningly, unspeakably sad. This photo breaks the heart.
Yesterday, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker charged Reid, 35, with the strongest possible charge she could bring, DWI involving serious physical injury. It is a class D felony with a potential prison sentence of one to seven years.
Baker said changes to Missouri’s DWI laws in recent years limited the charges her office could bring.
In addition, you just know this isn’t going to go well for the prosecution. Very possibly, Reid will get out of this without a felony conviction, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him spend six months or less in jail.
He’s got one of the best criminal defense lawyers in town, J.R. Hobbs; he’s got his family’s money behind him; he’s Andy Reid’s son; and breaks he got in earlier criminal matters may well work in his favor.
For all those reasons, the case probably will be settled by plea agreement rather than a jury trial.
It shouldn’t be that way, of course, especially given Britt Reid’s previous record. In January 2007, he was involved in a Pennsylvania road-rage incident in which he pointed a handgun at a man’s face. While awaiting a court date, he was arrested again and charged with driving under the influence of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
In November 2007, Reid, then 22, was sentenced to eight to 23 months in jail, to be followed by four years’ probation, after pleading guilty to simple assault, drug possession and possessing a firearm without a license. That was on the first case.
On the DUI charge, he was sentenced to one to six months in jail.
The stories I’ve read about those incidents do not say how much time he actually served, and they do not say if he was convicted of a felony in the gun case. I tend to think it was not because the stories I read reference jail time, not prison time. Jail usually equates to misdemeanors, prison to felonies.
If he does not have a felony conviction on his record, his punishment in the current case will be lighter than it otherwise would have been.
Moreover, I’m not sure that the Pennsylvania DUI case can be considered by a judge or jury. I believe it would have to have been in Missouri for it to be factored into sentencing in this case.
It’s all stacking up to be another case in which a defendant with connections and money slips away letting out a sigh of relief, spared from prison one more time. Meanwhile, little Ariel’s chance to live a normal life has been snatched from her, and her broken family will be taking care of her for however long she draws breath.
About Reid, all I can say is if he had been a good man…if he had been a good man, he would have learned his lesson in 2007. He didn’t take the chance that was handed to him, though, and now we know he just went back to his rotten ways, probably reasoning that being Andy Reid’s son probably would shield him in the event his failure to reform caught up with him again.
He was probably right.
A good friend believes Andy Reid will retire over this. Maybe he should. Maybe it’s time for the Reids to move on. For their own sake more than ours. Start over somewhere else. That taste in the mouth…those painful thoughts about Ariel…they aren’t going away anytime soon. Not for the Reids and not for most of us in Kansas City.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
The JaCo Prosecutor’s website says Britt Reid has been charged with “driving while intoxicated and causing the vehicular crash.” Given Reid’s BAC, the DWI aspect seems irrefutable.
Do you think it will be hard for the prosecution to get a felony conviction because they can’t prove Reid is also guilty of “causing the vehicular crash?” Who else/what else do you think the defense could contend is primarily responsible?
I think it will be difficult to get a felony conviction for a variety of reasons, Mark, including a reluctance to go into all-out battle with a rich defendant (Dad’s money) with a top-notch attorney. Also, see Altevogt’s comment below…
I admit I’m almost there, but I’m not quite cynical enough yet to believe JPB won’t pursue the felony charge (and be capable of obtaining a conviction) given the evidence as it is currently publicly known. If this goes to trial, I assume the defense would try to put a significant amount of blame for the accident on the position/lack of lights of the parked cars on the side of the entrance ramp (Reid’s intoxication and speeding notwithstanding). What a tragedy this is.
The record locally for these cases is pathetic. Remember Three Wheel Lokeman, former Star columnist? Drunk as a skunk driving on three wheels , refused to take a breathalyzer test. First, the court didn’t take her license per law for refusing the test and then it went silent. I tried to find out what happened and it basically disappeared. The case was never reported to the state, she retained her license and best I could figure out was a couple hundred bucks in fines. Then there was the Mertensmeyer kid. Son of a local Mission Hills attorney. He killed a pedestrian while drunk and got all of a 120 days in jail. I think you even wrote about that, Fitz. Those are just the tip of the massive iceberg according to the local MADD chapter. Hard to get justice when you have the best judges money can buy sitting on the bench who will gladly ignore the law for…
Can addictive disorders be used to reflect on the character of the person who suffers from them? I can’t answer that. I do know that the addict’s behavior almost always results in a ripple effect that often brings pain and suffering to others. There is no consistent message or standard in which our culture deals with these disorders and their resultant effects. Unfairness is another frustrating aspect of so many behavioral disorders.