Oak Lawn police lacked probable cause to charge a woman with driving under the influence after she struck a pedestrian on a village street, according to a report released by the village’s Police Department.
The driver was cited for failing to reduce speed to avoid an accident when hitting 28-year-old Murod Kurdi, who his family said was standing June 5 near his parked car outside his family’s home when he was hit by a car.
Kurdi died the following day at Advocate Christ Medical Center, and his family has filed a lawsuit against the driver who struck him. He suffered multiple injuries as a result of being hit and his death was ruled an accident, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Investigating officers were correct in not arresting the driver for being under the influence, and that officers “were exhaustive in their efforts to determine if impairment by alcohol or drugs was an issue,” Jennifer Cifaldi, Illinois traffic safety resource prosecutor with the state police, wrote in a July 24 report.
Oak Lawn police provided a copy of the report Tuesday after the 27-year-old Oak Lawn woman made an appearance at the Bridgeview courthouse on the ticket. Police said the citation would be adjudicated by the secretary of state’s office.
One officer reported the driver did not show “any obvious physical signs of impairment” and that her speech “was clear, logical, coherent, and not mumbled or slurred,” Cifaldi noted in her report.
Another officer wrote that he “could not detect any odor of alcohol” from the driver and that she “was not slurring her words, her eyes were not bloodshot, and she was not swaying back and forth,” according to Cifaldi’s report.
Oak Lawn police said search warrants were obtained for the driver’s cellphone use data and her vehicle’s event-data recorder, and that Cook County sheriff’s police completed a crash reconstruction investigation.
The lawsuit alleges the driver had been drinking before the accident and “was rendered intoxicated” and was speeding at the time. Police said the investigation determined the driver was traveling at about 27 mph in a 25 mph zone.
Cifaldi noted that while one officer detected a slight odor of alcohol from the driver who struck Kurdi, “It has been a long-standing principal of law in Illinois that the odor of an alcoholic beverage alone does not constitute probable cause for an officer to believe that someone is under the influence of alcohol.”
Oak Lawn police said Tuesday, in releasing Cifaldi’s report, that officers had asked the driver to perform additional field sobriety tests and she declined, which police said was within her rights.
David Petrich, an attorney for Kurdi’s family, previously said the Oak Lawn Police Department should have demanded to have a blood-alcohol test done.
At a news conference Tuesday outside the Bridgeview courthouse, the attorney said the police “investigation did not go the way it should have.”
The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court July 14, seeks damages in excess of $50,000. Apart from the driver, the complaint names an Oak Lawn bar as a defendant. The plaintiff is Fadia Muhamad, Kurdi’s mother.
The lawsuit notes Kurdi had parked his vehicle on the north side of the street in the 5100 block of West 91st Street when the driver “collided with great force and violence.”
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