Police Failed to Interview Witnesses in Disneyland Death

Anaheim police did not interview any independent eyewitnesses to the Disneyland accident that killed a tourist last month, relying instead on the accounts of Disney employees who were interviewed in the presence of park officials, the police chief said.

Police arrived too late to find park visitors who had witnessed the incident, a slow response that his department will remedy in the future, Chief Randall W. Gaston said. But detectives also did not contact park visitors afterward to corroborate employees’ accounts, even though Disneyland officials say that they compiled a list of visitors who witnessed the accident.

Gaston said his detectives determined that no crime had occurred after interviewing park employees and being briefed by Disneyland officials. There was no need, he said, to seek out other witnesses.

“The witnesses we most wanted to speak to we did contact,” he said. “The people we considered important to interview were the ones that were involved directly in the accident.”

Anaheim’s chief of detectives, Det. Capt. Roger Baker, said he was not aware of any list provided by Disneyland officials.

Criminologists say it is the duty of police to secure other versions of what took place to ensure that a crime has not occurred.

“You can’t rely on an agent of a business on whose property a disaster took place to tell the story,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor. “What about the other people on the ship? What about the people standing around on the dock with a story to tell? If I had a family member hurt at Disney or anywhere . . . I would not want to rely on the version told by their security or by the people being paid by this industry--in other words, a biased source.”

Alpert also said it is unheard of for police to allow Disney claims officials or security guards to sit in on police interviews regarding any potential criminal activity. “It sounds like you’re getting some sanctioned interference from private industry into public government,” he said.

Although the incident has been ruled an accident by the Orange County coroner, the actions of police and Disney officials have raised questions. Some eyewitnesses said neither police nor Disney officials made any effort to interview them.

Disney officials made no effort to interview them.

“The Disney people didn’t even seem like they wanted to talk to anyone,” said Julie Higgins, a park visitor who was standing behind the victims when the accident occurred. “The Disney security tried to shoo people away. The security lady said, ‘Go on and enjoy your day. This isn’t any fun to watch.’ ”

Higgins, of Santa Rosa, and other witnesses said they hung around the scene for 40 minutes to an hour afterward, and no one from the park asked them questions.

Another woman at the scene that day with her husband said they gave their names to a Disney manager, but no one called to question them.

“I couldn’t have been more available,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous. “I was distraught. I wanted to talk.”

The coroner’s report attributed the Christmas Eve accident to a worker’s attempt to tie the sailing ship Columbia to a dock while the vessel was moving too fast. The report said the mooring rope yanked an eight-pound metal cleat free and flung it into a group of tourists, striking two Washington visitors in the head. The whipsawing rope seriously injured the worker on the dock.

Luan Phi Dawson, 33, of Duvall, Wash., died two days later of a brain hemorrhage and skull fracture. His wife, Lieu Thuy Vuong, 43, underwent surgery for facial disfigurement. The Disneyland employee, Christine Carpenter, 30, had surgery for a severely lacerated foot.

Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said Disney officials interviewed park-goers who witnessed the accident immediately after it occurred. He said park personnel either gave the list to police or told them that it existed.

“We talked to [park visitors]. We took names and certainly [the list] was an option that was available to them,” he said. “As to why the police didn’t interview them, you’ll have to talk to them.”

But Gaston said his investigators asked for any witnesses Disneyland officials had identified.

“They certainly did ask: ‘Are there witnesses that we can interview?’ ” Gaston said. “The witnesses [whom police investigators] did interview were the ones that were present when they arrived.”

Police were aware that other, non-Disneyland witnesses existed, their report on the incident shows. In interviews with investigators, one Disney employee said he directed a park visitor at the scene to talk to a Disney manager. Another employee spoke of taking the business card of a witness.

Gaston said detectives were sent to the hospitals where the three victims were taken, but were unable to interview them because they were unconscious or in surgery. By the time Vuong and Carpenter were able to be questioned, police already had determined that the cause was accidental, he said.

Anaheim police have previously been criticized for not arriving at the site of the accident until after Disneyland employees had cleaned up the scene and carted away evidence. Investigators did not arrive at the park until three hours after the accident and spent an hour and a half being briefed by Disney officials and interviewing employees brought by the officials in the Disneyland security office.

Investigators in other cities with major amusement parks said they would have raced to seal off the scene and secure witnesses.

After the criticism, Gaston met with Disneyland officials and instructed them to leave major injury and crime scenes undisturbed until police can investigate.

In a statement Saturday, Gaston said: “Any major incident or crime scene [should] be immediately preserved and prompt notification be made to the Police Department. This Police Department will then manage the scene through the conclusion of the investigation.”

Gaston said his detectives also would have been better able to interview independent eyewitnesses at the scene Christmas Eve if they had arrived earlier.

“It would be better, as I’ve indicated, if we were called immediately. If we could get there very soon after the incident,” he said.

But, Gaston added, his detectives were only at the park to determine whether a crime had been committed. Once they were satisfied the incident was an accident, he said, the jurisdiction of the investigation passed into the hands of the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, which is investigating the cause of the incident. To question more visitors would have intruded on that agency’s investigation, he said.

Cal/OSHA is continuing to investigate the accident because a worker was injured.

James Brown, the agency’s district manager for Anaheim, confirmed that his team intends to perform a much more thorough investigation. It appears the police, he said, “went in there, did their investigating and ended it fast.”

“We don’t do it that way,” he said. “We can go on for months.”

An agency official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Disneyland officials offered the names of Disney employees for Cal/OSHA to interview, but the agency chose to launch a full-fledged investigation.

Times staff writer E. Scott Reckard contributed to this story.