THE INVESTIGATOR

Six months removed from training, trooper put on case

By Jack Brammer

Herald-Leader Staff Writer

Ed Reinke

The burned-out shell of the bus sat in a National Guard armory in Carrollton three days after the accident. File photo by Ed Reinke | Associated Press

Then: Six months after graduating from traffic collision reconstruction training for the Kentucky State Police, Trooper Sonny Cease, 26, was named lead investigator of the Carrollton bus crash.

The trooper who would have normally gotten the assignment was on vacation that night.

Cease was lying on a couch in his Crestwood home after a day of water skiing on the Ohio River when he was called to the scene. "The message was nothing about death, nothing about fire. I was just told six ambulances were on the way."

When he arrived on the scene, Neal Brittain, commander of the La Grange state police post, told Cease that 18 to 20 people were missing.

"I asked where were they. He told me to look in the bus."

Cease's 18-month investigation, which produced more than 2,000 documents and 1,196 photographs, revealed that Mahoney had traveled 2.3 miles in the wrong direction on Interstate 71 and had passed 14 vehicles before hitting the bus.

"I met him in the hospital on Monday and told him he was charged with 27 murders. He cried."

On Jan. 23, 1991, about 18 months after Mahoney's trial ended, Cease woke up and thought he was having a heart attack.

"I became bedridden. I couldn't hold up my head. I got little support from the state police. My doctors sent me to the Mayo Clinic and I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome."

Now: Cease said it took 16 years "to get over" the stress caused by the crash.

"Sometimes when I'm tired I still can feel it, but I'm taking care of myself," he said, adding that his life is his wife and 9-year-old twin daughters.

Cease retired three years ago from the state police. The former executive director of the Kentucky State Police Professional Association now lives in Prospect and runs Reconstruction Services, which investigates and reconstructs motor vehicle accidents.

Earlier this month, he went to Northern Kentucky to investigate a school bus in which a student was killed when a dump truck hit it.

In 2003, Cease decided to cut up the bus in the Carrollton crash and bury it.

"I'm not going to say where. I decided to do that because I got information that someone wanted to buy it, maybe put it on display. I didn't want it to be a novelty."

Cease invited family members of the victims to attend. Some did.

"I'm glad we did that," he said. "In our mind, the case was buried."