Thanks to CNN, Nikki Catsouras Car Crash Photos in the News Again

Nikki Catsouras was just an average 18-year-old girl that was a bit more well-to-do than the rest when she fell into the wrong crowd and tried cocaine. It's likely none of us would ever have known the name of Nikki Catsouras if it wasn't for one tragic day when it seems that the combination of cocaine and a brain disorder due to a tumor she had removed as a child led to a series of events that would make search terms like "Nikki Catsouras car crash photos" and "Nikki Catsouras death photos" continuously pop up as popular search items. And, unfortunately, the gruesome Nikki Catsouras car crash photos continue to circulate despite her family's desperate efforts to have them removed from internet sites.

It seems as though the recent searches for the Nikki Catsouras death photos are due to CNN Headline News airing a story about the attempts of Nikki Catsouras' family to get the car crash photos removed from the web. According to wikipedia, Nikki Catsouras was born with a brain tumor that doctors feared would lead to an early end to her young life, but she survived the radiation treatments she underwent as a baby. Still, doctors warned her parents that the effects of the brain tumor and the treatments could manifest themselves when she got older, leading to poor judgment and impulsive behavior. It seems that the effects did show up later in life, and, when her underlying health problem was combined with the effects of cocaine, Nikki Catsouras ended up in the hospital for cocaine-induced psychosis. She was scheduled to visit a psychiatrist that specialized in brain disorders the day after she died in a gruesome car crash that would, sadly, become what Nikki Catsouras is remembered for.

Apparently Nikki Catsouras took her father's Porsche without permission one day when she stormed out of the house after losing the privileges to her own car. What followed was a gruesome accident that still continues to haunt the Catsouras family in a horrifying way. The Nikki Catsouras crash photos were taken by highway patrol officers, and her remains were deemed too gruesome for her family to even identify the body. However, her parents would not be spared from seeing the Nikki Catsouras death photos, as the photos soon made their way onto the internet, thanks to two employees of the California Highway Patrol forwarding them to other members of the department. They spread from there, and a fake MySpace tribute site to Nikki Catsouras was set up that led visitors to the crash photos. Some cruel internet pranksters even sent the death photos directly to Nikki Catsouras' parents with messages stating that their daughter was still alive.

It's hard to imagine what the parents of Nikki Catsouras are still going through over these horrible pictures, and it's so sad that this is the way they are being forced to remember their daughter. They filed a lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol, but since there is no legal precedent, they have been unsuccessful at getting any kind of justice for the leaking of the crash photos. They have appealed their case, however, and continue to fight to have the Nikki Catsouras crash photos removed from the web.

I've seen some pretty gruesome crash photos in my line of work, and I've seen the living family members who, thankfully, have never had to see the photos themselves. I've seen the tears they shed over their loved ones and the difficulty they have in dealing with talking about their tragic ends. It would break my heart to see the reaction that these families would have to seeing the crash photos of their loved ones, and I sincerely hope that they never do.

It's a shame that Nikki Catsouras' family is having to deal with something so terrible, but what else is so horrible to me is that there are thousands of people out there with a morbid desire to see the Nikki Catsouras crash photos, and I'm sorry that the CNN report unveiled this ugly side of the internet once more.

SOURCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_Catsouras