CMPD cops who disobeyed orders and chased car now slated for trial over fatal crash
A lawsuit claiming Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers caused the death of an innocent bystander and put another man in a coma will go to trial, a judge ordered Wednesday, July 22.
Read more At uptown vigil, protesters condemn ICE killings, planned NC detention facility
Brittany Webb died in January 2022 after a man in a Jeep collided head-on with the Honda she was in. Police were chasing the man, Bryan Gabriel Franklin Jr., on Jan. 3, 2022, when he drove into rush hour traffic on Statesville Road in north Charlotte. They thought he had an obscured license plate. Officer body-camera footage revealed that police kept chasing Franklin even after their supervising sergeant told them not to.
CMPD previously left that detail out of a six-minute video police made for the public about the crash.
Franklin is serving 13 years in prison for second-degree murder of Webb. The civil lawsuit filed in Mecklenburg Superior Court says the officers who chased him should be held accountable, too.
Read more Copperhead bite leaves beloved NC puppeteer unable to walk. ‘Felt a sharp pain’
A judge on Wednesday ordered the case filed against the city of Charlotte can go to trial, denying the city’s motion for summary judgment, which prompts a judge to decide which — if any — claims in a lawsuit go to trial. Superior Court Judge Patrick Nadolski, who is the senior resident judge in Montgomery and Stanly counties east of Charlotte, said in his order that “there are genuine issues of material fact” that should go to a jury.
Earlier this month, WCNC reported that during the motion hearing for summary judgment, lawyers representing Webb’s and the survivors’ families revealed that the officers who chased Franklin admitted they caused the crash. The city’s attorneys maintain that the officers did not cause him to drive into oncoming traffic.
Read more Hearing set on Charlotte developer’s planned 500-acre Lake Norman mega community
A trial is set for Aug. 17.
