Nikki Catsouras Story

LANCASTER - A California Highway Patrol dispatcher, speaking publicly for the first time about a high-profile lawsuit blaming him for photos of a dead teen proliferating on the Internet, said he feels sorry for her family but that he did nothing wrong.

"Why am I here?" Thomas O'Donnell said in a quiet voice as he sat in his attorney's office. "I didn't do anything wrong."

The lawsuit accuses O'Donnell, 38, and another CHP dispatcher of illegally transmitting to the public gory images of car-crash victim Nicole "Nikki" Catsouras – turning her into an online sensation and further traumatizing her grieving Ladera Ranch family.

Nikki took her father's Porsche without his permission on Oct. 31, 2006, and slammed it into a toll plaza in Lake Forest. Just weeks after her death, pictures of her corpse began appearing on Web sites – many of which specialize in morbid curiosities.

Her parents sued the CHP after the agency took responsibility for the leaked images, which are supposed to be used only for investigative purposes.

ABC's "20/20'' aired a segment on the crash and its aftermath, focusing on anonymous Internet users who taunted the Catsouras family with photos of all of Nikki's face and most of her head missing.

O'Donnell is an 18-year CHP veteran and dispatch supervisor in Irvine.

As he defended his actions during a one-hour interview this week, Nikki's parents, for the first time, detailed their daughter's mental and physical state in the hours leading up to the crash – criticizing defense attorneys for making an issue of an illegal drug found in her system.

Both sides are girding for a key court hearing next month in a case that has magnified the dark side of the Internet while raising questions about an individual's right to privacy following a very public death.

Well its very sad but the story goes like this,she had an argument with her dad and decided to take his porsche and was speading and....you know the rest,people at the seen took pictures of the death and emialed to thier friends,and it leaked all over the internet,the family sued for 20$million dollars,but it shows how life goes

 

That's a fairly callous thing to do, but I'd imagine that it's protected under the whole "freedom of speech" department.

 

Your not gonna supply me with the death pictures?
Anyways i've never heard of this before.

 

ehm yeah people need to know,just not see the death photos,its not right when you post someones death,but so far as the story,eh....

 

Does it say why they leaked the images?

 

well they didn't ecxatly "leak" them,they sent the photos to close friends,and they posted blogs about it and other people did to,sad story

 

Why would you show your friends? I could barely sit in the drivers ed classroom when they showed dead bodies from wrecks, i didn't want to drive for about a month.

 

Wow what a bunch of assholes they have no respect for the family I hope they get something out of all this.

 

Most likely somewhere alone the lines of

4Chan on /b/!