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BY IVAN SANDERS

CITY OF ELIZABETHTON PIO

When traffic accidents occur resulting in serious injury or fatalities, it is of utmost importance to make sure that the details of what caused the accident be as precise as possible for all parties involved.

For that reason, members of law enforcement spend many hours outside of their normal duties to learn how to properly investigate accidents so they can reconstruct all elements of what led to the crash.

Recently, Corporal Mike Ward and Patrolman Hayden Holtsclaw with the Elizabethton Police Department spent 240 hours of training each to become certified crash reconstructionists.

Both officers are members of the department’s STAR team, which stands for Special Traffic Accident Reconstruction.

The team is made up of Traffic Sergeant Doug Combs and Training Corporal Wayne Pritchard, who both are certified crash reconstructionists, as well as Patrol Corporal James Deese and Patrol Corporal Jason Mosier, who will also be taking the training.

Holtsclaw is assigned to the EPD’s traffic unit, while Ward is assigned to the patrol division, where he is a Standardized Field Sobriety Test instructor as well as a S.T.O.P.S. instructor (Strategies and Tactics of Patrol Stops).

The reconstructionist program is conducted by the Tennessee Highway Safety Office (THSO).