An Arizona woman mistakenly stopped with a Grappler device during a pursuit tells the ABC15 Investigators she thought she and her daughter were going to die. I don't think I could ever forget that. Sosa was driving in the town of Guadalupe in October when she recounted looking in the rearview mirror and seeing a cop really close behind her. We previously reported that a Tempe police officer chasing a suspect deployed a Grappler to try and stop the vehicle, but records show it was the wrong car.
A Grappler is a device used by police in an attempt to stop a moving vehicle. The pursuit was in October , but it took nearly a year for the Tempe Police Department to release the body camera video through a public records request.
Submit your news tip to Investigators abc Sosa could be heard on body camera video yelling at officers that her ten-year-old daughter was in the car. There is no video of the actual deployment because the Tempe Police Department does not have dash cameras in their patrol cars.
However, the body camera footage shows the seconds after police stopped the wrong vehicle. Sosa says she is still without a vehicle more than 14 months after the incident. Sosa said since her car was totaled, she now has to take an Uber to work, but says she has reduced her hours to part-time because of the added cost of relying on a rideshare service.
Sosa said a rental car was provided to her as they worked through the estimates for a repair, but said the city eventually gave her the runaround. A spokesperson for the City of Tempe said they made several attempts to work with the owner of the vehicle.
