Saturday, June 14, 2025 was another busy day for 47-year-old Kevin McKelvey. The Indianapolis father of three was a professor, poet, writer, activist and farmer engaged in the community “in ways writ large and in smaller ways, too,” said friend and colleague Barney Haney.
He was the kind of person “who wanted to give you his tomato plants.”
But at 10 minutes past noon, as McKelvey was driving his 12-year-old son home from martial arts practice north along Meridian Street near 64th Street, his Honda Fit was hit head-on by the speeding driver of a stolen Kia Sportage SUV. The suspect, Alexander Mitchell, was weaving in and out of Meridian Street traffic, trying to elude a southbound pursuit by Carmel police, before he crossed the centerline in front of McKelvey’s Fit.
A pursuit should not begin, nor should it be continued, when the need for immediate apprehension is very low and the totality of risk (from the chase) to public safety is very high.Carmel Police Department pursuit policy
McKelvey’s car spun out on the rain-slick road and hit another southbound car, driven by Guilia Carloni. All four victims survived the crash with what seemed like non-fatal injuries. But McKelvey had hit his head so hard he couldn’t recall where he was, what had happened, or his phone number and insurance information, according to the Indianapolis police report.
In the days following the crash, McKelvey told friends he was grateful to be alive. In a June 26 text to one friend, he wrote, “I was just thinking a couple days ago that I’m lucky I didn’t break a femur. Onward!”
Three days later, on June 29, he complained to his wife of severe headaches. By the time emergency crews responded, he was dead. Clots in his veins had traveled to the pulmonary arteries of both lungs and blocked the flow of blood. The Marion County Coroner’s office ruled the car accident as McKelvey’s cause of death.
The Carmel Police Department won’t release information on the accident or the identity of the officer or officers involved while an investigation continues, the city’s corporate counsel’s office wrote in an email. But the noon-hour high-speed pursuit into Indianapolis on a rainy Saturday may have violated more than a few statewide and Carmel police guidelines.
“A pursuit should not begin, nor should it be continued, when the need for immediate apprehension is very low and the totality of risk (from the chase) to public safety is very high,” says Carmel’s 18-page pursuit policy, which was no longer available on the city’s website on Aug. 15. Officers in Carmel are also instructed to give “special consideration” to traffic congestion, time of day, road conditions and the officer’s familiarity with the surrounding neighborhood. In 2016, Indiana repealed a state law that classified carjacking as a violent felony.
Court records show that Mitchell, a 24-year-old Carmel resident, had a history of drug possession, drug dealing and traffic violations but no arrests for violent crimes. He was facing charges of narcotics dealing stemming from a November 2023 arrest and had failed to show up for a March 2025 court hearing.
After the crash, he was charged with resisting law enforcement, criminal recklessness, reckless driving, unlawful carrying of a gun and driving with a suspended license. Whether Mitchell showed his gun prior to the chase is not addressed in the court records. The case is pending in Marion Superior Court.
Alarming Hoosier statistics
Indiana has a long history of police chases ending in deaths, and despite stricter police guidelines on when the risk of a pursuit is justified, the problem still exists.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, at least 86 people — bystanders, suspects and law enforcement officers — died as the result of high-speed police chases in Indiana from 1993 through 2003. An Indianapolis Star investigation found that, in only about 3% of those cases, the suspect faced violent felony charges after the chase, while the most frequent charge was resisting arrest, which grew out of the chase itself.
Starting in 2023, Indiana legislators set a statewide minimum safety standard for high-speed police chases. To justify a pursuit, police must consider the potential danger if the suspect isn’t apprehended immediately, the violation the suspect is accused of, and the imminent danger to the public as well as the time of day, traffic conditions and visibility and the officer’s familiarity with surroundings and population density.
But the most recent data available from the NHTSA show that, in 2023 alone, Indiana recorded 18 fatalities caused by police chases, ranking 10th nationwide and tying with Ohio, which has almost 5 million more people. Nationally, 470 people were killed during pursuits in 2023.
That same year, following a spike in chase fatalities during the pandemic, The Police Executive Research Forum, a national advisory council on policing standards, recommended prohibiting pursuits unless a violent crime has been committed or the suspect poses an immediate threat to the public.
“It’s about the sanctity of life and balancing the risk to everyone,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of PERF, told the Associated Press at the time. “Police officers die in pursuits. Suspects die in pursuits and even citizens can be injured or die.”
Efforts to restrict police pursuits were part of the reforms many police departments introduced following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Some jurisdictions are now loosening their pursuit policies again as police complain the laws handcuff them in apprehending criminals and protecting communities.
In 2021, Washington State’s Democratic legislature passed one of the most restrictive pursuit laws in the country, permitting police chases only when an officer has “probable cause” — the higher standard of evidence needed to make an arrest or search — that a suspect committed a violent crime, a sex offense, was driving intoxicated or fleeing arrest. Three years later, a ballot initiative financed by wealthy conservatives overturned that law and allowed police chases for “reasonable suspicion” — the lower standard used for brief stops and questioning — that a crime of any kind was committed.
“Smart” police departments limit chases to violent criminal suspects or those who present an imminent danger to the public, said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor who has conducted research on high-risk police activities for the past 30 years. “What do we know about this (suspect)? Did he rape a woman? Did he kill someone? Did he shoot someone at Walmart? For crimes like that, we as the public understand our risk level will be increased because we do really want to apprehend those people. Now you still have to balance that risk. For example, even if you have a serious violent crime, are you going to chase someone to a grade school at 3 o’ clock in the afternoon when school’s letting out?”
But even the strictest pursuit guidelines are meaningless without adequate training, supervision and accountability for police officers, Alpert said. “We see from time to time officers just either not making good decisions, or getting carried away, or both. That’s why you have training. That’s why you have policies and supervision. And when you see someone (violating policies), you really want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. There has to be a very serious and comprehensive investigation into how that happened.”
McKelvey’s legacy
A July 11 memorial tribute to McKelvey drew a standing-room-only crowd of about 500 family, friends and students that overflowed The Tube Factory art gallery and spilled outside onto the patio. McKelvey was a professor of English at the University of Indianapolis, founder of the student-run Etchings Press, a board member of the Central Indiana Land Trust, and cofounder of the University of Indianapolis’ Master of Arts in Social Practice program, a graduate degree focused on using artistic practices to address social issues and engage with communities.
McKelvey also started the UIndy Gardens to grow fresh vegetables on campus for easing local food deserts and volunteered for Second Story, a youth writing program at Big Car, a community art and design collaborative. He regularly delivered his homegrown tomato or pepper plants to dozens of his gardening friends.
“I don’t think he spent a lot of time sleeping or resting,” said Jim Walker, executive director of Big Car. “Kevin was always busy. He loved life and was just full of energy. He was doing a million things, but he was wanting to do a million more things.”
McKelvey was beloved among his students, said Molly Martin, chair of UIndy’s English department. “He was an excellent individual mentor. He knew when to push. He knew how to guide. He knew how to get the best out of students. And because he was so good at that, a lot of students really built relationships with him.”
At the end of her tribute, McKelvey’s wife, Lakshmi Hasanadka, told the memorial gathering at Big Car: “Call your representatives; use Kevin’s name. Tell them to make sure that no one else’s father will end up the same way.”
Hasanadka declined comment for this story through her attorney, Bill Winingham, who said he is in process of filing a lawsuit in the case.
State Sen. Fady Qaddoura. D-Indianapolis, said in an email he is considering the introduction of a number of new legislative restrictions on police pursuits, including pre-approval from a district supervisor in the case of non-violent suspects or those not posing an immediate public threat, as well as continual evaluation of all guidelines throughout the chase.
“I will be working with state and local law enforcement agencies to ensure these reforms are practical and effective,” the statement said.
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