Carjacking incidents never end well. On May 10, a group including teenagers beat up a man in Hallandale Beach, stole his car, took off on a reckless, high-speed ride, and with police in pursuit, crashed it into a woman’s car in Pompano Beach.
She died at the scene. Patricia Schmelz was 68.
The accused driver of the stolen car, 16-year-old Justin Edmond, was in court Thursday, asking a judge for bond.
His attorney, Jim Lewis, argued that the arriving officers declared her dead while she was still alive, which led to a delay in her receiving medical attention. Lewis told Judge Ernest Kollra that without that delay, Schmelz might have survived and Edmond wouldn’t have been charged with vehicular homicide – therefore, he should be eligible for bond.
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In the police body-worn camera video, more than one officer can be heard saying there’s a “signal seven” in the other car, which is police code for a dead person. But a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy noticed that Schmelz was breathing. The videos show deputies doing their best to help here, including CPR compressions.
“We’re not here to criticize the officers for what they did, this is a legal thing, but it’s unfortunate that they did pronounce her to be a signal seven, which is dead on the scene, and then some 10 minutes later, you go back and find out she’s not dead, and at that point they did do everything they could,” Lewis said.
The judge rejected the argument, saying the woman’s death had nothing to do with his decision to keep Edmond in jail without bond.
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“I made a finding that he was a danger to the community because he was driving a car at 135 miles an hour up 95,” Judge Kollra said in court.
The bottom line might be that even if Schmelz had received immediate medical attention, there’s no way to know if that would’ve been enough to save her life. Everyone involved in the carjacking was arrested at the crash scene.
