The Usual Suspects Are Rarely the Perpetrators
It ended in tragedy. A 16 year old girl was found dead. But it didn’t happen the way most people think,
Kiely Rodni went missing shortly after midnight on August 6th. She was last seen at a campground party attended by many others her age.
It didn’t take long before authorities in Northern California announced they’re conducting sex offender compliance sweeps. The news reported that, “The Truckee Police Department, in partnership with the Placer County Probation Department and the Auburn Police Department, conducted sweeps throughout the Truckee/North Tahoe area on Thursday and found several [sex] offenders in violation of their terms with one arrest being made and charges to be filed against another, the department said.”
I’d imagine that reader’s thoughts immediately jumped to conclusions. A teenager had gone missing PLUS registrants found in violation with an arrest being made. What other conclusions can be deduced? It’s the situation laws are created in response to.
A few hours ago, Kiely’s car and body were found submerged in a lake. According to one news report, Her friend, Sami Smith, was at the party with her and said Rodni had been planning to spend the night at the campground. “I know that she wasn’t in the right mindset or state to drive. And if she were to have driven, she wouldn’t have made it far,” Smith told KOVR-TV.
It ended in tragedy regardless. But the conclusion to another “missing girl” story didn’t end the way many people were led to believe. She was not abducted, no registrant was involved. A teenager was drinking at a party, made the unfortunate choice to drive home when she wasn’t in the right state to drive, and likely accidentally killed herself driving drunk. It happens to too many children.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of “missing children” cases turn out to be runaways or when there is an actual abduction, it’s a familiar abduction by a non-custodial parent. The usual suspects (people on the registry) are rarely the perpetrators. They are hardly ever. Yet when a kid goes missing it’s the first place people turn. Sometimes at the expense of looking into the more probable circumstances of the disappearance.
Without anyone to fault for Kiely’s death, other than Keily’s mistake in judgment on August 6th, the family will be left with not only a void in their lives but a void in the assignment of blame. We hope if the family seeks to enact a law in their daughter’s memory, “Kiely’s Law” will target the actual cause of this tragedy (drinking and driving) and not shift the blame elsewhere.
Our hearts go out to the family.
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The CNN article quotes law enforcement as “having nothing to go on” as their reasoning behind treating this case like an abduction immediately after her disappearance.
“A void in the assignment of blame,” indeed. The police did a disservice to that family by placing a sweep of sex offenders on a list of suspects. Whenever the law confuses a tragedy with a crime, it is harder on the family. When will law enforcement learn that monsterization shouldn’t be their first thought?
The SO Registry exists because of emotional based laws.
Can we just NOT have any more laws named after dead kids? Hasn’t this emotional manipulation gone on long enough? Kids die…been the way since time began. It’s common knowledge that underage drinking is illegal and certainly drinking and driving at any age is illegal.
There are laws already in place for BOTH of these events. IMO this was the fault of poor parenting and nothing more.
Let’s get rid of emotionally based laws and stick to the facts that MIGHT actually save a child instead of make the grieving parents “feel better”.
I live close to that area. Placer County is one of the absolute worst in the state. They will prosecute the most ridiculous things. I know of a man who was sentenced to 9 years in prison prison for Lewd and Lascivious Acts against a minor 13 years of age or less for telling a sexual joke in her presence. He was telling the joke in a room filled mostly with adults but one mother of a 12 year old girl got very angry and called the police. One judge presides over all of the sex crime cases and always gives the maximum sentence to anyone who takes their case to trial. He’s also said in open court that defendants have to prove their innocence. The Placer County Sheriffs department has a social media page that is almost 100% dedicated to bragging about arrests they have made. It’s disgusting. I’m actually surprised it took a week for them to do this sweep. Of course when they did they immediately took to social media to brag about it. I actually commented on that post asking how many were arrested for technical violations that wouldn’t be considered a crime if the individuals had not been on paper. I also asked if the charges they were considering filing on the one person was sex offense related or something else. Unsurprisingly I got zero response from PCSO but everyone who praised and thanked them did. It’s a corrupt county from top to bottom that only cares about padding their arrests, getting elected by fear mongering and touting their 99% conviction rate for sex offenses, and keeping their multimillion dollar new jail full. For full disclosure I have never been arrested let alone convicted of a crime, don’t and never will live in Placer County, and I still think the whole county operates through corruption that frequently crosses the line into unconstitutional.
I posted a comment on their page as well, stating that if they spent less time on facebook patting themselves on the back, and more time actually searching for her, they would have found her themselves instead of a group of volunteers who found her where the sheriff said they already looked. I’ll probably get a lot of hate responses.
I read a lot of comments where people were telling them to check the lake again, but the sheriff office kept saying they already did.
I’m also trying to understand how her car got into 14 feet of water over 55 feet from the shore without anyone seeing or hearing anything.
Rhetorical question: I thought you had to be 21 to drink in the US? Looks like the SOR and the 21 yr old age limit law for drinking done an outstanding job at protecting this teenager. My prayers go out to the family.
Its because laws do not prevent crime. Laws only punish crimes. Legislatures can write all the laws they want until they’re blue in the face, but those laws will NEVER prevent a crime from happening.
At the top of Michigan’s registry page is the statement, “This registry is made available through the Internet with the intent to better assist the public in preventing and protecting against the commission of future criminal sexual acts by convicted sex offenders.” and I always laugh at it because having your name and details published on it does NOTHING to protect the public or to prevent future crimes. If it did, then wouldn’t it also make sense to make a registry of all crimes and list the entire population on it to prevent future crimes from happening?
Here is a link to the Youtube stars “Adventures with purpose” who found her and her car submerged in the water. The link below is the video footage of that recovery and discovery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF0QFhv2Cu0
I read that as well, that the police did not find her. Even with all the time and money spent. And when that girl was killed by that Laundry guy and they were looking for her at first, they found like 4 other dead people that had been missing for various lengths of time. I wish I had the statistics, I have seen them, but basically it shows the low rate of success of crimes being solved. Between this and the Ulvalde disaster I can help but wonder why society as a whole does not demand better. I don’t get it.