By Cindy Pham
Artwork by Rianna Varghese
It was a quiet night at Northeastern University when Jaahnavi Kandula, a software engineering graduate student, was about to cross Dexter Avenue North at Thomas Street. She was a stellar student, whom academic adviser Khaled Bugrara described as “sharp, meticulous and full of energy.” To her, it was just the end of another regular, beautiful day.
Suddenly, the quiet street was no longer quiet. Bright red and blue sirens blinded the street when a police car stopped abruptly in the middle of the crossing section, and Kandula was found dead on the scene. Her body was thrown over 100 feet away from where she stood.
It was found shortly after that Police Officer Kevin Dave hit Kandula while driving 74 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour speed limit zone, attempting to respond to an overdose call. Other police authorities responded to the accident, including Officer Daniel Auderer and Officer Mike Solan, the president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild.
On the way to the scene, it seemed like the both of them were completely unaware that Auderer’s body cam was still recording. It would later show that Auderer seemed to be dismissing any interpretation that Officer Dave, the policeman who struck Kandula, might have been at fault or that there needed to be an investigation. Instead, it could be heard through the bodycam that Auderer said in a joking tone, “Just write a check,” and continued, “Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26 anyway. She had limited value.” While he did not just misstate the victim’s age, Auderer’s comments were taken as insensitive to the woman who had just lost her life. Neither Solan’s voice nor demeanor were captured during this conversation.
After more than half a year of silence, an employee of the Seattle Police Department came upon the video recording, and was so upset about it that they anonymously reported it to the Seattle Police lawyers. It took the police department more than half a year, countless criticism articles, and protests to finally launch an official investigation on Auderer on August 2, 2023. The Community Police Commission of Seattle called for Auderer to be suspended without pay.
At the end of the investigation, the Seattle Police Officers Guild issued a statement saying that Auderer and Solan were actually mimicking and mocking attorneys who will later “put a price” on Kandula’s life during trial for her death, and that the conversation was taken out of context. After the publication of the statement above, the public was further outraged by the outcome, demanding Auderer be put on leave instead of being re-assigned to a non-operational position, as he had been subjected to a total of 29 complaints regarding police misconduct since 2014.
The shocking death of Kandula rippled through the country when this video came out. There is a call to action by young students empathizing with her situation, and a rage that is sparked when people consider how much of her life was ahead of her.
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