Police Officer Who Laughed After Woman’s Death Says His Comments Were ‘Not Made With Malice’

There is growing outrage over a Seattle police officer who laughed while talking about the death of a college student who was run over by a patrol car.

Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old Northeastern university graduate student, was struck by a another police officer speeding to an emergency call. He was going 74 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour zone.

Bodycam video shows police Officer Daniel Auderer laughing about Kandula’s death during a call with the president of the Seattle Police Union.

“Yeah, just write a check. $11,000. She was 26 anyway. She had limited value,” Auderer can be heard saying.

Auderer, who is vice president of the police union, seems to minimize the tragedy.

“I don’t think she was thrown 40 feet either. I think she went up on the hood, hit the windshield, then when he hit the brakes, flew off the car. But she is dead,” Auderer says in the footage, and then proceeds to laugh.

Other police officers are appalled.

“The victim and her family, they're going to see and hear this video of him talking about their loved one like she's a piece of trash,” chair of the Seattle Police Department African-American Community Advisory Council, Victoria Beach, tells Inside Edition. “What kind of person could laugh about somebody being hit and put a dollar amount on their life.”

Protesters called for the laughing cop to be fired Thursday night.

Auderer says he was not being callous but rather talking about how city lawyers would treat the case.

"I understand that if a citizen were to hear it they would rightfully believe I was being insensitive,” Auderer says. “The comment was not made with malice or a hard heart, quite the opposite." 

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