While Missouri governor Mike Parsons has commuted the sentence of former Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid, the family of the 5-year-old girl who was injured by Reid in the accident while he was legally impaired expressed their strong disapproval of the decision.
Statements issued by the family of Ariel Young and their attorney raised questions about Parsons’ rationale behind the decision.
“The family is disgusted, I am disgusted, and I believe . . . that the majority of the people in the state of Missouri are disgusted by the governor’s actions,” lawyer Tom Porto told the Daily Beast. “If you drink and drive and you put a little girl in a coma… you should have to serve the entire sentence that a judge of this state gave you.
”Reid, the son of Chiefs coach Andy Reid, was sentenced in 2022 to three years in state prison after pleading guilty to a felony count of driving while intoxicated, resulting in serious physical injury.
Reid will be under strict house arrest until Oct. 31, 2025.
“Reid had completed his alcohol abuse treatment program and has served more prison time than most individuals convicted of similar offenses,” Parson spokesman Johnathan Shiflett told the AP about the reasoning for the decision.
Reid crashed his Dodge Ram Pickup truck into two vehicles on Interstate 435, injuring six people, including himself, just days before the Super Bowl in 2021.
“How would the governor feel if this was his daughter? . . . It seems the laws don’t apply equally to the haves and have-nots. The haves get favors. The have-nots serve their sentence,” Felicia Miller, Ariel’s mother, said in a statement.
Reid had been an assistant coach for the Chiefs at the time and admitted to drinking in the team facility before the crash that occurred on Feb. 4, 2021.
