VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — The mother of a woman run down and killed by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper is sharing her pain for the first time.
Amy Kuehn’s family recently reached a settlement with the state for the incident in 2017.
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Amy’s mom, Toni Maines, said her daughter was a joy since birth.
“She had one of those personalities that drew you in no matter who you were,” Maines said.
At 22. Amy was taking courses in Texas to become a sign language interpreter, but she wanted to move to Volusia County where her dad lived to start fresh.
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So she flew to town, looked at apartments with him and then went out at night, excited for what was ahead.
On July 15, 2017, at around 1 a.m., a Florida Highway Patrol trooper clocked the red Mustang Amy’s dad Aaron was driving going 71 in a 45 mph zone. He turned onto Lake Charles Road from North Kepler Road near DeLand, slowed the car, and dash camera video shows Amy getting out of the passenger seat and running.
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Seconds later, the footage shows another trooper driving by and hitting her.
In the audio, you can hear someone say she was scared and ran out of the car, slipping and falling before she was run over.
For almost 40 hours, family members who came in from out of town couldn’t find Amy at any facility. She was admitted to the hospital as a Jane Doe.
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And they said they couldn’t talk to her dad because he was in jail after being arrested on the scene for DUI. Those charges were later dropped.
“Our immediate reaction was just horror for the family,” family lawyer Kelly Chanfrau said.
Once they finally identified Amy at Orlando Regional Medical Center, she was in the ICU fighting for her life.
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“I think it was somewhere around day five or six I realized I was just watching her die,” Maines said.
They were forced to say goodbye to their baby girl.
“I just kept going back to that perfect little head she had at birth and how her face and her head looked then,” Maines said.
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The family worked with Chanfrau and her team to file a lawsuit against the Florida Highway Patrol and the troopers involved.
Amy’s family says she had paranoid schizophrenia and that was why she ran — their lawyer said Amy did nothing wrong.
FHP recently settled the lawsuit, paying the family $500,000.
“This case was going to create change. And that is what the family deserves,” Chanfrau said.
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FHP has agreed to change its pursuit policy when it comes to a person running on foot from a trooper. FHP will include Amy’s name in training so that it brings some closure to her family. However, her family also says they will never find comfort despite FHP’s actions.
The troopers involved did not face charges.
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