Reckless drivers hurt hundreds every year
Broken bones, right arm paralysis. ‘This could have happened to anyone’
Phyllis Kim Evans doesn’t remember much about the crash that nearly killed her in June. Her car was struck by a 14-year-old driver in a stolen car who was fleeing police during a high-speed chase on Milwaukee’s north side. ❚ The June 22 chase ended at Fond du Lac Avenue and West Locust Street, where the teen drove through a red light and Tboned Evans on the passenger side. ❚ The crash left the longtime We Energies employee with paralysis in her right arm, a broken right ankle, broken ribs, a bruised aorta, spinal damage and head trauma. ❚ The teen driver attempted to flee after the crash but was taken into custody by police along with his 13-year-old companion. The car they were in was totaled.
Moments after impact, Evans’ car burst into flames. The fire was extinguished, saving her life, but it took emergency crews nearly an hour to extricate her from the wreckage. Mercifully, she has no memory of the impact.
“The only thing I remember is putting on my seat belt when I left my daughter’s house,” Evans said. “The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital and having a lot of people with white coats all around me telling me that I was in a serious accident.”
“I told them, ‘No I wasn’t.’ But obviously, I was.”
Nearly a month after the accident, Evans is still being treated at Froedtert Hospital.
With both arms bandaged and her ankle in a cast, Evans is headed to rehabilitation to gain strength so she can eventually get back to work as an office assistant, and more importantly, as the primary caregiver to her 87-year-old mother.
“I just want people to know what happens to innocent people after a crash,” she said. “I was innocent, and this could have happened to anyone.” The statistics show she is right. Preliminary data show there were 299 car crash injuries related to speed in Milwaukee County through Monday, compared with 224 through roughly the same period in 2010, according to the Community Maps database, an online tool developed by the state Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Safety and the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s a 33% increase.
Annually, car crash injuries related to speed in the county jumped from 369 in 2010 to 576 in 2018 — a 56% increase, the database indicates.
The influence of speed is even more evident in fatal crashes.
Of 61 fatal car accidents in Milwaukee County in 2018, estimates show, speed was a factor in 36, or 59%. So far this year, it’s been a factor in 62% , the database shows.
“Drivers have got to understand that speed kills,” said Joseph Davis Sr., regional program manager for the Bureau of Transportation Safety. “We can set up hot spots and pay officers overtime to try to keep it in check, but they can’t be everywhere.”
Lucky to be alive
Despite her numerous injuries and inability to walk, Evans remains in good spirits.
Her hospital room is filled with “Get Well Soon” heart-shaped balloons. Vases sit in the window filled with different colored roses, and family members take turns staying by her side.
When asked her age, she joked she would soon be 62 and was still accepting gifts.
“It’s never too early or too late to get me something.” She had a birthday party at the hospital on Monday.
After seeing pictures of the crash scene that destroyed her 2013 Buick Verano, Evans realized that she was lucky to be alive.
“It could have been so much worse, considering how bad the crash was and the injuries to her spine,” said her sister, Joyce Evans. “We are lucky that they didn’t have to do a feeding tube.”
Phyllis Evans, who also works as a chief inspector for the city Election Commission, worries about her mother, whom she has been caring for since she suffered a stroke three years ago.
Before her stroke, Annie Evans was the matriarch of the family, the person who kept everyone together. After the stroke, Evans became her mother’s primary caregiver, including bathing and feeding her. Care for Annie is now split between Joyce and other family members.
“People just don’t realize how much you can change a person’s life by making a bad decision,” Joyce Evans said.
‘This didn’t need to happen’
Saturday, June 22, was just a typical day, Phyllis Evans said.
She accidentally left her purse at her daughter’s house the night before and drove over to retrieve it from North 51st Street and West Capitol Drive. They hung out at the house and shared a few laughs before her daughter, Ryann Counce Barnes, had to pick her husband up from the barbershop.
“I remember everything about that day,” said Barnes. “It was 3:23 p.m. when my husband called me to pick him up and when me and mom walked out the door together.”
Barnes drove one way down the alley; her mother headed the other way.
“I called her at 3:26 because I wanted to tell her something, and I talked to her for two minutes,” she said. “The accident happened at 3:31 p.m.”
Shortly after 5 p.m., Barnes received a call from her dad saying he couldn’t reach her mom.
“I figured she went to the grocery store or the casino or something before heading home,” she said.
Barnes, 41, said before she left for her third-shift job as a bartender, she got a call from Joyce Evans saying that her mother had been in a serious accident.
“Had I not been running late for work that day, I would have missed the call because at work I don’t look at my phone,” she said.
Barnes rushed to the hospital and, upon seeing her mother, was devastated.
“I couldn’t believe it. I was just with her and then this happened. I’m hurt, angry and sad because this didn’t need to happen,” she said.
Barnes teaches young people studying for their GEDs at Vincent High School; most are at-risk students who are down to their last chance. She often hears the stories about their bad decisions — stealing cars, driving recklessly. Now, those stories hit home.
“Just last week, I picked up the phone to call her like I typically do, and I was about to ask her to do something for me and I had to pause for a second because I knew she couldn’t,” Barnes said.
“That part hurts because I almost lost my mom to no fault of her own.”
‘Driving scares me’
Milwaukee Ald. Bob Donovan, chair of the Common Council’s Public Safety
and Health Committee, said he will launch a pilot project to target dangerous intersections. That includes North 60th Street and West Capitol Drive, where Milwaukee Police Officer Kou Her was killed in a hit-and-run crash last month. “Take it EZ Milwaukee” will include a public information campaign and a greater police presence.
Since her sister’s accident, Joyce Evans has not gotten behind the wheel of her car.
“Driving scares me,” she said. She avoids Capitol Drive and other streets she considers unsafe.
“The only way I would get on Capitol Drive is with a Cessna twin-engine plane because it’s that dangerous. The way they speed and cut across in front of you. It’s crazy. It didn’t used to be like that,” she said.
Evans’ family also questions whether changes are needed to the Police Department’s pursuit policy. Cities around the nation are examining their policies as innocent people are injured or killed in high-speed pursuits.
In June, the Kansas City Star reported that six innocent people were killed and dozens more seriously injured as a result of police chases since 2014. In the article, a criminologist who studies police chases at the University of South Carolina called them “unnecessary.”
When police chase someone who is speeding, it puts innocent people in danger, Joyce Evans said.
“I wish we could put more into technology and cameras to catch people driving crazy instead of having police just chase people through intersections and having people go through lights. That’s just too dangerous,” she said.
The high-speed chase debate is a hot topic in Milwaukee. Ald. Michael Murphy, who leads a reckless driving task force, believes more dialogue is needed on the Milwaukee police chase policy, which allows an officer to chase vehicles linked to violent crime but also to pursue cars tied to drug dealing or reckless driving.
Radio talk-show host Earl Ingram Jr. has frequently spoken out against police chases because he says the tactic places too many innocent bystanders at risk.
“Why would you chase kids, who have no concept of life, endangering innocent people just to make a collar,” Ingram said.
Police Chief Alfonso Morales has said there are no plans to change the policy.
Anger, and many unanswered questions
On July 15, Barnes was by her mother’s bedside trying to find a rehabilitation facility. When a nurse asked her if she had decided where to send her mother, Barnes told her she wanted to visit the facilities before making that decision.
“I just can’t send my mom anywhere,” she said. “I have to know that she is being taken care of because she’s my world.”
Barnes was dreading another task: facing the teenager who plowed into her mother’s car. He was scheduled to appear in juvenile court two days later.
“I just have so many emotions going on right now,” she said. “I have to be in this space for my mother, but at the same time I have to make sure justice is being served.”
Barnes’ mind was swimming in a sea of unanswered questions.
Where were the boy’s parents? How did they not know he stole a car? Why haven’t they reached out to the family to apologize?
Will her mother ever be the same again?
“I want a real apology and not one that he’s forced to give. If it’s a fake apology, I really don’t want to hear it,” she said.
Two days later at juvenile court, Barnes got a surprise: The 14-year-old driver apologized.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I didn’t mean to hit her. I’m sorry,’ ” Barnes said.
The teen entered a guilty plea to firstdegree recklessly endangering safety and recklessly driving causing great bodily harm; if found guilty, he faces a maximum of two years in a juvenile detention facility, she said.
“We found out that this wasn’t the first time he stole a car,” Barnes said. “But it’s the first time someone got hurt.”
The 13-year-old passenger in the stolen vehicle suffered a broken jaw, lacerated liver and a dislocated left leg.
The 14-year-old stole the white 2016 Jeep Renegade from North Bremen Street the night before the crash, Barnes said.
The 14-year-old’s mother did not speak to Barnes, she said, but the boy’s older brother also apologized. He watches his younger brother because their mother works full time, she said. To her surprise, she knew him.
“He had been at Vincent before,” Barnes said. “He said his brother wasn’t a bad kid and he hoped that we could forgive him.”
Barnes felt a pang of sympathy for the 14-year-old.
“When he came out, I couldn’t believe how little he was,” she said. “It really broke my heart.
“It may sound crazy, but I can’t help but feel sorry for him.”