Police screamed in panic and desperately tried to revive a mother they ran over in the street as her distraught children looked on, bodycam and dashcam footage shows.
Desire Pool, 41, was mowed down at full speed by Houston police officer Shelby Kennedy on September 19 at 9:52 pm and died en route despite resuscitation efforts.
Houston police released video from five different angles just hours before Thanksgiving, showing Pool being hit and the immediate aftermath.
Pool and her two daughters, ages 10 and 18, and their sibling had just gotten off the bus and were crossing the street, without a crosswalk, and she dropped her bus pass.
As she bent down to pick it up, Kennedy’s police car, which was transporting a suspect for detention, drove into her at full speed as her children moved out of the way.
‘Wow! Wow! Wow! Oh, my fucking God! You haven’t seen them?’ Kennedy’s partner, Officer Joshua Rosales, screamed. ‘No!’ she replied.
Desire Pool, 41, was mowed down at full speed by Houston police officer Shelby Kennedy on September 19 at 9:52 p.m. and died along the way despite resuscitation efforts
Houston police released video from five different angles just hours before Thanksgiving, showing Pool being hit and the immediate aftermath
This is the moment before Pool was hit, when her children ducked out of the way
“Oh my fucking God, Kennecy,” Rosales repeated in shock.
The pair got out of the car calling for help, and began CPR on Pool as her children screamed and cried hysterically.
‘My mother! You killed my mother!’ one shouted at them.
Another stepped down, took her hand and begged, “Mama, don’t die on me… Come on, pray, pray.”
Kennedy’s bodycam showed Rosales performing Pool CPR as she called for help and told her dispatcher that CPR was in progress.
As she put on gloves before walking over to help her partner, she told herself to “calm down.”
As Rosales performed CPR, he told his partner to “breathe.”
Pool was officially declared dead when she arrived at the hospital.
Her uncle Lee Gordon said Kennedy “needed to be held accountable” and that a public apology from HPD would not be enough.
‘Her two children saw their mother being mowed down in the street. They have nightmares. We are doing our best to get them mental health care so that we can get them back to normal,” he told ABC.
Pool’s family said they were not warned when the footage would be made public on the department’s YouTube channel.
Officer Joshua Rosales administers CPR as Pool’s children watch hysterically screaming and crying
‘My mother! You killed my mother!’ one shouted at them
The police lean over Pool and resuscitate her in a desperate attempt to save her life
One of Pool’s children stepped down, took her hand and begged, “Mama, don’t die on me… Come on, pray, pray.”
“I don’t know what she (Kennedy) was doing. She could have been looking at the little computer that she has there, or whatever she had, or whatever she had, so her view was blocked to where she had to have to somewhere find another way,” said Pool’s 18-year-old son Jalen Gary.
The fatal crash was also caught on camera by surveillance at a nearby business, showing the three children in the street while their mother knelt.
As the black and white police car drives past the bus stop, the children are able to scramble out of the way, but their mother cannot.
Witnesses described seeing the mother drop her bus pass and go back onto the road to pick it up when she was hit by the car.
“We have a loud crowd. They were very upset about what just happened and they all dispersed,” said Houston Police Chief Luis Menendez-Sierra..
HPD maintained at the time that the officers had done nothing wrong.
“The patrol vehicle struck a pedestrian on the roadway, not in a crosswalk,” Houston police said in a statement.
Just meters from the bus stop, the mother and her children found themselves on the road as the police car sped towards them, according to new footage of the crash
Video shows a police car approaching the group of people on the street
Police say woman may have dropped her bus pass and went back out to pick it up when she was hit
Two officers driving a marked patrol car were taking a suspect to the local jail when the car crashed into the woman.
“Officers immediately stopped and rendered aid to the injured woman.”
The woman was taken to a local hospital where she died.
None of her children were injured.
“A preliminary investigation indicates that speed is not believed to be a factor in the crash and that the pedestrian failed to yield the right of way to a vehicle,” HPD said.