Sheriff’s deputies undressed the body of a 20-year-old car crash victim then took inappropriate nude photos of her at the side of the road, her mother has claimed.
Christina Mejia first outlined her accusations in a lawsuit filed against the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois in 2010 and the trial is scheduled to begin next week.
Her daughter, Jessica Mejia, was killed in the early hours of December 31, 2009 when her ex-boyfriend, Nicholas Sord, lost control of the car they were traveling in and smashed into a pole.
When deputies arrived on the scene, they improperly removed clothing from Mejia’s dead body and took photographs of her, according to the lawsuit.
The young woman had been wearing a white t-shirt, jeans and high-heeled shoes but was photographed wearing just her lower undergarment, according to the Chicago Tribune.
By doing so, the deputies intentionally caused emotional distress to the victim’s family, they say.
‘This was a young lady that just died and was treated with less dignity than a deer carcass you find on the side of the road,’ family attorney Don Perry told the Tribune.
Mrs Mejia added that the photos had left her feeling ‘violated’ and she accused the deputies’ actions of perpetuating false rumors that the car had crashed because her daughter was on top of Sord.
‘(People) think my daughter died from having sex, not from somebody being drunk and killing her,’ the heartbroken mother told the Tribune.
‘By the time everybody else got to the scene… she was partially naked because they made her naked. So the rumors, and the allegations… they made it believable.’
But the sheriff’s office insisted that it took the photographs at the scene in order to gather evidence that ultimately helped to convict Sord. They called the images ‘standard operating procedure’.
‘The family suffered an unimaginable loss, and the crime scene photos were taken as our officers investigated this crime and were instrumental in securing a conviction against the person responsible for this tragic death,’ spokeswoman Cara Smith said. ‘In no way were these photos intended to cause harm to the family.’
Sord, whose blood alcohol level was .236 per cent when he smashed his Mercedes SUV into a pole, pleaded guilty to drunken driving last fall and was sentenced to 56 months in prison.
Sord was a business partner with former Chicago Blackhawks player Denis Savard and is the son of Bryan Sord, a prominent developer and restaurateur.
He and Mejia had dated but had broken up months before the crash. Mejia was studying psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago when she died.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3049253/Mother-sues-officers-removed-clothes-daughter-s-dead-body-nude-photos-fatal-car-crash.html#ixzz3YbSP6GUk
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she broke up with the guy weeks before, but was riding around with him as the driver while he was drunk?
let that sink in
I was thinking the exact same thing…
I also do not understand the point of the undressing of the deceased, in particular how that was supposed to help convict the drunk driver.
Just another example of the kind of sick bastards become police.
Every day in IL. Such are there cops.
“They called the images ‘standard operating procedure’.”
Standard in their brand of Hell, maybe. Obviously, ‘Standard’ is whatever they say it is these days.
Our ‘standard’ will be to see to it they all die from lead ‘poisoning’.
The scum cops probably have some jooish buyers for necro porn.
Or it was for their personal ‘stash’.