Petition to Investigate Chance Geery’s Death and the Prosecution of Yoon Hee Cho is Gaining Signatures

On April 1, Hellgate High School student Chance Geery was killed when Yoon Hee Cho accidentally drove her car up onto a Missoula sidewalk on Mullan road and hit him. A Missoula court charged Cho after she pleaded guilty to Misdemeanor Careless Driving Resulting in Death and she was placed under 30 days of house arrest. However, Chance's father Todd Geery says the punishment did not fit the crime and that Missoula has now set a dangerous precedent.

"Now if anyone in Missoula goes down the road, drives up on the side walk, and runs over a person or two people, and if they are not intoxicated or under the influence of any other drugs and not using their cell phone, there is a president set now in the process and it  says that they get 30 day house arrest...  and that is it," Geery said.

Over the past few days, the Geery family has has been gathering signatures for a petition to ask Governor Bullock to investigate the way Cho was prosecuted.

"I want him to reopen the case and to get out the investigation first of all, which [County Attorney Fred] Van Valkenburg refuses to give me," said Geery. "I want that to be brought out and I want the people who were in charge of that investigation to explain why those  inconsistencies are in the investigation. That's something that hopefully Bullock and his office would be willing to do."

Geery says an investigation could lead to a shake-up of the way Missoula's justice system works.

"In the course of that [investigation], if what they find out is that people weren't doing their jobs properly, then I think it would be a huge public service to remove those people from where they are at."

As of Tuesday, July 2, the petition had 70 signatures, but Todd Geery hopes he can collect around 10,000.

Interview with Todd Geery: