Cass Politics

from the Star Herald:    

What began with a fit of rage on the night of May 26 ended in the most horrific fashion the following afternoon on U.S. 71 north of Butler, ending two lives instantly and forever changing countless others.

A small Ford Focus, being driven southbound in the northbound lanes at 110 miles per hour by Nicholas L. Schilling, 26, Belton, slammed head-on into a northbound Chevrolet Silverado being driven by Joe M. Nowlin, 40, of Vinita, Okla.

Nowlin and Schilling were killed instantly in the collision, and Nowlin’s son, 14-year-old Cayden Nowlin, suffered critical injuries. He remained in Children’s Mercy Hospital on Wednesday morning with his mother and grandmother at his bedside. He had been upgraded to fair condition.

Police have struggled in the time since the accident to come to grips with the tragedy. According to Maj. Jeff Weber of the Cass County Sheriff’s Office, the dashcam video that shows the chase from the time his deputy picked it up at Peculiar, shows a vehicle reaching triple-digit speeds throughout the incident, swerving at times in an apparent attempt to sideswipe other vehicles on U.S. 71.

“I don’t think he set out trying to kill himself,” Weber said. “There were any number of bridge abutments he could have hit that would have accomplished that. I think he was intentionally trying to cause an accident behind him that would have gotten the officers off his tail. I think he wanted to hurt someone else.”

Belton officers attempted to negotiate heavy late-afternoon traffic on M-58 Highway to deploy stop sticks on U.S. 71, but were unable to reach the highway in time. Just south of the Commercial Street exit in Harrisonville, Weber said the video shows the black car swerving to avoid stop sticks set up by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

The procedure was again attempted near Archie, but to no avail, he said.

Weber said the video shows officers attempting to keep pace with the speeding vehicle, but other than the stop sticks, no aggressive moves were made.

“People have asked why we didn’t try all kinds of maneuvers, but at that speed and with that kind of traffic, there’s literally nothing we could do except try to keep up,” he said.

As the pursuit crossed into Bates County, the Cass County deputy discontinued his active pursuit, but continued to keep pace, Weber said. An Archie police officer drove just ahead of the county deputy with lights and siren on.

Just across the county line, he said, the car was nearly hemmed in as two wideload tractor-trailer trucks maneuvered into a position that made it appear they may have been trying to stop the car, Weber said.

He said at that point, the driver took his vehicle into the median, driving on the grass for up to a quarter-mile before popping up into the oncoming lane. Police continued driving in the southbound lanes and could only watch helplessly as northbound vehicles swerved and slowed suddenly to miss the speeding, oncoming car.

Shortly after moving back up to the pavement, Weber said his officer again paced the car at over 100 miles per hour.

“If you figure he was going that speed and the oncoming traffic was doing the speed limit at 70, that’s nearly 200 miles per hour. You have literally no reaction time at that point,” he said.

The red pickup truck was unable to avoid the collision.

Traffic on U.S. 71 was stopped for nearly three hours after the collision and the case has been turned over to the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Major Crash Investigation Unit, which will reconstruct the accident and examine medical reports in order to determine an exact cause and contributing factors. According to MSHP Sgt. Scott Meyer, that report should be issued in 30 to 45 days.

Belton police had been called to a residence in the Orleans Place subdivision just prior to midnight May 26 on a domestic disturbance report. According to court documents, Schilling had returned to the residence he and his wife shared earlier in the evening and had been told that the family’s dog had bitten their child.

He allegedly began beating the dog and the wife took the child and left the room, the reports said. When she returned, she found a pool of blood in the room and the dog was gone.

Authorities believe he had stabbed the dog to death and wrapped it in a blanket before placing it in his car.

They said at some point later, he drove to a former girlfriend’s house, just blocks away, threatened her and another witness with a knife and left, promising to return. When he returned, documents said, he placed the dog’s body on the former girlfriend’s lawn and set it ablaze.

Belton police were called to the scene of the fire and took a report of the threat. The following day, officers met with prosecutors to begin the charging process and secure warrants for Schilling’s arrest on a felony aggravated assault with a weapon charge in addition to a misdemeanor count of animal abuse.

While officers were meeting with Prosecutor Teresa Hensley in Harrisonville the following day, Bel­ton police were again called to the address of the girlfriend’s house in Orleans Place.

“She said he was there again and he had taken her cell phone and wouldn’t let her call,” said Capt. Don Spears of the Belton Police Department.

“So she ended up coming outside to call.”

Schilling left the residence, according to police and several officers maneuvered through the late afternoon traffic in an attempt to keep tabs on his vehicle.

Officers lost sight of the car near the intersection of M-58 Highway and Cedar, but moments later spotted it in lighter traffic on North Scott near 155th Street. The officer turned on his lights and siren, but the car failed to stop, proceeding onto southbound U.S. 71. Officers followed the vehicle through Belton, but terminated the pursuit at the southern city limits.

“Every department has to weigh the circumstances and the dangers involved not only to the public, but to the officers and everyone involved,” Spears said. “These decisions have to be made sometimes in a split-second because we know people’s lives are at stake.”

In this case, he said, the department was aware other officers would soon be in place further to the south.