Attorney Crosland calls dismissal ‘disappointing’
Lawsuit over fatal crash involving Norwalk police tossed out by court
NORWALK — A Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming that a Norwalk police officer caused the death of a 19year-old man and severely injured his stepbrother during a car chase in 2017.
Judge Charles Lee ruled on Thursday that officer Ramon Tejada’s decision to pursue Vincent Fowlkes, 19, and his stepbrother Shawn Bowman, 22, was “discretionary” and is subject to governmental immunity, which protects the officer from any liability.
Kathleen Slonksi, the mother of the two men, could not be reached for comment on the court’s decision.
Attorney Darnell Crosland who, along with Shawn Bowman, represented Slonski in the lawsuit, called the dismissal “disappointing.”
“Qualified immunity isn’t complex at all, it’s simply a gateway to no accountability for police misconduct,” he said in a statement on Monday. “I’m highly disappointed that
justice doesn’t include us. As we are learning from the Breonna Taylor grand jury debacle, justice is prescribed to a delineated end, and when you have people and systems in place to present a case towards a premeditated end, or systems that allow for police to be immune from liability you will have disappointing results like the one in the Fowlkes case.”
Fowlkes and Bowman were in Colonial Village on Jan. 26 when Norwalk police’s Special Services Unit was serving an arrest warrant on a “local drug prince,” according to a motion written by Norwalk Deputy Corporation Counsel Jeffrey Spahr.
But the suspect, Michael Massey, who was then 28, eluded police on foot. Arresting officers then radioed in for backup, at which point Tejada responded from a nearby extra-duty job.
Tejada arrived at Colonial Village and joined a roadblock on Suncrest Road, at which point he claims a black Honda Civic sped toward him at a
high rate of speed. The car then jumped up on the curb and sped north on Scribner Avenue, according to motions filed by Spahr.
Though Tejada drove after the car, Spahr claims the officer lost sight of the vehicle around St. Matthew’s Church, just over a half-mile down Scribner.
Spahr wrote in a motion that the last time Tejada saw the car carrying Fowlkes and Bowman was as it drove “full speed” over a rise at intersection of Richards and Scribner avenues.
When Tejada next saw the car, it had crashed into a tree near 27 Geneva Road, Spahr wrote. Fowlkes was pronounced dead, and Bowman was later diagnosed with permanent brain damage.
The lawsuit claimed Tejada had violated the Norwalk Police Department’s pursuit policy by failing to get authorization for the pursuit, failing to start the pursuit with a “legitimate basis” and failing to terminate a potentially dangerous pursuit. By continuing the pursuit, the lawsuit claims, Tejada risked the plaintiffs’ safety.
An internal investiga
tion conducted by Norwalk police in the months after the crash determined that there was “a significant distance between the suspect vehicle and the officer.” The investigation, which was later corroborated by the State’s Attorney’s Office, found Tejada had acted in accordance with the department’s pursuit policy.
In his decision, Lee cited a 2020 Supreme Court decision that “rejected arguments comparable to those raised by the plaintiffs.” The case, Borelli v. Renaldi, found town and municipal police officers were shielded by governmental and qualified immunity from liability in car chases that ended in fatal crashes as long as the officer is shown to have been driving “with due regard for the safety of all persons and property.”
Tejada met this threshold, Lee ruled on Thursday.
“(B)ased on the factual record of this case, where Officer Tejeda made a split-second decision to pursue a vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed, and did so for little more than a minute, this court determines that the rea
soning in Borelli is applicable to the manner in which the chase was conducted,” Lee wrote. “Therefore, the court concludes that the conduct of the chase itself was discretionary, and the identifiable victim/imminent harm exception also does not apply.”
Norwalk Police Chief Thomas Kulhawik de
clined to comment on the dismissal of the lawsuit.
Spahr, speaking on the city’s behalf, said in a statement Friday that he was “pleased” by the court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit, though he lamented the circumstances in which it arose.
“It is tragic that a person lost their life in this incident and that another
was seriously injured. It is clear that, at all times, the whole incident could have been avoided if the fleeing persons had only stopped their attempt to escape from the police,” Spahr said.
Crosland said the legal team behind the lawsuit is still considering a possible appeal of the court’s decision.