‘Slaughter in our roads’: Family grieves the loss of sheriff radar bill

HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WDAM) - For more than a decade, Mississippi has led the nation in the number of fatal car crashes.

The state has had years to address the problem, yet the number of deaths has only grown over the years.

“You know what that color is?” Richard Bouchard, a strong advocate for giving sheriffs radars, says as he points out Mississippi on a graph that shows each state’s motor vehicle death rate. Mississippi is a deep maroon. “People tell me that’s Mississippi State colors. It’s not. It’s the color of dried blood on the side of our highways.”

Bouchard never paid much attention to speed radar laws - until his grandson’s blood stained a Mississippi highway.

Ayden Stockstill, 14, was riding with his dad and step-mom on Texas Flat Road, headed to soccer tryouts in Gulfport, when their truck was struck head-on by a sedan going over 100 miles per hour.

The sedan burst into flames upon impact, killing the driver. Ayden’s father was just able to pull his son and wife from the accident before the fire engulfed the truck as well.

“Even though he [Ayden] was buckled in the back seat, the crash was so violent that he suffered a neck injury and died in his father’s arms on the side of the road,” Bouchard recounted the day. “We’d been in Mississippi since 1990. I knew sheriffs didn’t have radar, and I didn’t care until it affected me.”

Ayden joins an estimated 700 people who die on Mississippi roads each year - roughly 66% of those deaths will happen on a rural road.

Senate Bill 2614 was the first-ever radar bill to make it out of committee. The goal of the bill was to lower that number by allowing counties to give sheriff’s departments a set amount of speed radars based on population to monitor county roads. That bill was tabled on Feb. 12.

Concerns of speed traps and government overreach have led legislators to block similar radar bills for years.

Forrest County Sheriff Charlie Sims says Mississippi already has a simple solution. Voting.

“Of all the agencies in Mississippi that would utilize radar if sheriffs had it, they are the only ones who can be held accountable every four years when they come up for vote,” Sims says. “If sheriffs were abusing that and setting up speed traps or that nature, then citizens have the right to take that sheriff out of office.”

It’s not just sheriff’s departments and victims’ families who want change. 20 counties across the state have already passed an ordinance adopting speed radars for sheriffs. Road safety organizations sent letters of approval to the legislature.

The move to table was put forth by Sen. Rod Hickman. The vote was taken through division - a head-count - and there is no record of which senators did or did not vote to table.

Even if Senate Bill 2614 isn’t what the legislature wants, Bouchard believes they need to do something - anything - to save lives.

“There is a slaughter going on in our roads, and they keep ignoring it for some bogus, bologna reasons,” Bouchard says.

For law enforcement, more speed radars feel like the obvious answer.

“They’re not the ones that have to go to the house and inform that family member that they lost a loved one,” Sims says. “... and it was something that could have been deterred through the use of radar.”

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