RENTON, Wash. — New body cam video shows the driver charged in the deadly Renton crash. This video was taken just moments after another high-speed collision back in January.
Court documents show Chase Jones was involved in three high speed crashes since last May. The third, just last week, killing four people, including three children. Two other kids were injured.
Investigators say he was driving more than 100 miles an hour when he crashed into a minivan loaded with passengers.
With a speeding history like this, it begs the question how did he still have a valid license to still be driving? It is a question a lot of people are asking. After all, investigators say he sped through this red light, driving 112 miles per hour in a 40 miles per hour zone.
In an instant, four innocent lives, gone.
This was at least the second time Kent police met up with 18-year-old Chase Jones because of a crash that allegedly involved excessive speed. This was just two months ago. The other driver accused Jones of driving so fast, he couldn’t stop in time.
“I see them, but too fast,” said the driver about Jones. “I don’t know.”
“I think what he’s trying to say is he saw the headlights,” said another officer, helping decipher her words.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “But too fast.”
Even so, Jones was not cited for causing that crash.
But eight months earlier, at another collision scene in Kent, he did admit to speeding.
“I saw an open road so, I was definitely going above the speed limit, 25,” Jones told the Kent police officer.
“How fast, if you had to guess?” the officer asked.
“Forty,” said Jones. “Fifty.”
Then just one week ago, Jones was allegedly behind the wheel when he ran a red light at Southeast 192nd Street in Renton with disastrous consequences.
He struck a minivan filled with passengers, killing all but two of them, 12-year-old Buster Brown, 12-year-old Eloise Wilcoxson and her 13-year-old sister, Matilda and 38-year-old Andrea Hudson.
“Just deeply saddened,” said longtime King County councilmember Reagan Dunn.
Dunn represents the district where the tragedy happened. A lawyer himself, he says the driving history of Chase Jones gives him pause.
“Yeah, I really question whether he should have been able to drive,” said Dunn. “You’ve got a continuing pattern of dangerous driving behavior that ended in multiple T-bone accidents, including the one that claimed the lives of four people. Sometimes having tough consequences for someone’s dangerous driving is exactly what that young person needs in order to slow down.”
So, why did he still have a license to drive? A spokeswoman for the state Department of Licensing says a judge has to issue an order to suspend a driver’s license. And that never happened in the case of Chase Jones.
Now he is charged with four counts of vehicular homicide and other charges. If convicted, he likely faces years behind bars.