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.
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.
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?
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.
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”.
“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 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.
I’m reading a lot of comments about this on the ASCOL site and about the cops doing their sweeps. Now I don’t know what the geography around that lake looks like, but one would think maybe their would have been tired tracks leading into the lake that should have been checked out.
Maybe this girl would still be alive today if her so-called friend Sami would have taken her car keys away if she was so concerned about Kelli not being in a good state of mind to drive.
I’m not trying to cast blame, but young people seem to lack common sense.
The article’s point about diverting law enforcement resources is spot on. Depending on the situation, using officers in a very low probability task could mean the difference between someone’s life or death. In this tragic case it did not, but I’m sure the police crowed about protecting the public by catching a few registrants in some technical violation. The police did not want to admit they were clueless, so they rounded up the usual suspects.
According to the timeline – https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article264749964.html – LE presumed abduction 2 days after the girl disappeared. Pretty sad that that’s what they consider obvious when a bunch of teenagers are getting loaded at a lake.
Do you think they counted the registrant sweeps as part of 19k man hours spent trying to find this girl and if so, how much (betting around 12k)? Do you think they see the irony that a handful of private citizens found her the day after arriving acting from the same clues (the party at the campground)?
I sincerely hope the family remembers this incompetence when this sheriff is running for reelection.
The minds of the parents of the missing girl immediately went to kidnapping/sex crimes and the local cops jumped on it.
I’m still looking for even a single case of sweeps leading to a missing child saved.
I’m still looking for a single case where the registry protected the public or prevented a future sex crime by someone listed on it.
🤣😂🤣 I’m really getting a kick out you guys sarcasm.
Disgusted
What it IS doing a good job of, is creating offshoot registries like “Nextdoor”. It is worse than the registry because people who have not bothered me since the registry was created, now know everything about me and try every day to force me off the street.
People who use to stop by and give us food, now wish me to get hit by a car. I have never done anything to these people and many were not even alive, 32 years ago when my offense occurred. Even though I was released from all paperwork 20 years ago, I am still being treated like I am on probation.
I keep saying “I”, I know we are all being treated this way but I can only speak for what is happening to me and my family. The registry is 1000% punishment and does nothing to stop an offense from us but does a ton to cause an offense against us.
I hear you bro. I had a neighbor who thought I was the nicest, greatest guy in the world because whenever it snowed, I would shovel the sidewalks of my neighbors or plow their driveways at no charge after doing mine because I’m up early every day. I would also do little things to help my neighbors without asking for anything in return. It’s how I am. I would be outside hanging out and they would come over and hang out with me, hand me a beer and just chat. Once they found out I was on the registry, I they suddenly changed their minds about me and I was seen as someone worse than Hitler. I even had neighbors move because they deemed me as someone to be feared.
My response? I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned everyone on my street can move out and I’ll have the entire neighborhood to myself. I’d find a way to buy every piece of property here then turn the street into a private driveway and gate up the entrance because it’s a dead end street anyway. I’m at the point in my life where I don’t give a crap what others think or say about me. If you don’t like me, stay away from me. It’s that simple. I have more than enough friends who don’t care about my past and I’m not looking to add more friends.
I had one neighbor tell me if I didn’t move, he would tell my landlady about me. I said go ahead because she already knows and doesn’t care because she calls me her best and favorite tenant. Hell, she even invited me in for lunch when I go pay my rent and she makes a point of bringing over birthday and Christmas presents for my family every year.
Checkmate.
Disgusted
What is snow? LOL
I was born up North, I last saw snow in the U.S in 1978. The next year my Dad retired from the military and we moved to Florida. I use to travel once a year and would see snow in Europe but with all the travel stops for registrants and me not having any income, all that went away. Now I get my photo albums out once a year and dream of what was and what could be.
BTW, I do not miss shoveling snow, or getting frost bite haha
I guess I counter that now with heat stroke here in Florida. *)~
@ Derek:
I didn’t see anything about the parents beyond pleading for her return. Check the timeline in the link in my other post below. The Placer County SO jumped to the registrant conclusion almost immediately after the missing person report was filed because they couldn’t find the vehicle. (Seems backwards to me – finding the car and not the girl is a much clearer indication of abduction, I would think.)
1900 man hours and God-knows how many dollars spent harassing local registrants netting 2 or 3 arrests and none of them had anything to do with the missing girl. Ironic that she was found by civilian volunteers within hours of their arrival, looking where deputies told them not to bother because they had supposedly searched it already.
I think the Placer County Sheriff’s Department should be nominated for a Shiitake, if you’re still doing that. They have GOT to be the most incompetent law enforcement agency in the US. If not, I’d really like to see who is.