No charges filed in runaway fire truck death

Another factor in the crash was the decision by Kelley, who was the ranking officer on the truck, not to crash the truck into cars or light poles lining the street. That likely saved the lives of pedestrians and residents, Conley said. The steepness of the hill also played a role, Conley said, noting that experts had said on almost any other street the driver would have been able to control the truck without crashing.

"Human error, insufficient driver training, the substandard in-house and outside maintenance of Ladder 26, the topography of Parker Hill Avenue, and Lieutenant Kelley's self-sacrificing determination to protect civilian lives all combined on that fateful day to send a massive peice of firefighting machinery hurtling toward a tragedy," Conley said in a letter to Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser.

Prosecutors had considered the idea of filing charges of manslaughter or motor vehicle homicide by negligent operation, but the evidence did not support the charges, Conley said.

The crash sparked an independent review commissioned by the Fire Department, which found that the department had for years taken a lax approach to all areas of fleet management, including failing to perform adequate preventive maintenance on firetrucks, keeping shoddy records of repairs, and relying on a staff of insufficiently trained firefighters who did not have fundamental knowledge such as how often to change the oil in vehicles.
 
Since then, the city has hired a professional fleet maintenance manager, a safety inspector and additional mechanics. But Kelley's family has been pushing for more, specifically a public hearing on a proposal by John M. Tobin Jr., who has called for fire trucks to be replaced after 10 years in service.