A family member of a pedestrian who was killed when she was struck by a Buena Park police car is appealing to the public in hopes a witness or witnesses will come forward.
“I demand justice for Katie!” said the loved one, who asked to only be identified as the “family” of Katherine Tinnell Dobson. “She was so beautiful.”
]
Katherine Tinnell Killed in Street by Buena Park Police Car
Buena Park Police Cpl. Andy Luong, the department spokesman, previously revealed that a woman was struck and killed around 1 a.m. Saturday by a Buena Park police car near Orangethorpe Avenue and Oregon Street.
The officer was heading to a call, Luong said, although the spokesman did not know if the lights and sirens were on or if the woman was in the crosswalks. He called it the first fatal accident involving a Buena Park cop car hitting a pedestrian, declined to name the officer behind the wheel and mentioned the California Highway Patrol's Westminster office is investigating. There are reports it was a canine unit.
The Orange County coroner's office identified the deceased as 33-year-old Katherine Tinnell, which is curious to the family because, they say, she was married to Rick Dobson and had “Ricky” tattooed on one hand and “Dobson” on the other. They say she went by Katie Dobson.
“We're so upset over this,” the family said. “She was an amputee.”
According to the family, “There was a witness with her.”
They are trying to get ahold of the police report to see if the witness is mentioned.
“She was struggling but a great girl,” the family said. “Kind and honest to a fault. … She was a good person and this is so important to find out what really happened.”
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.