Police to crack down on street racers

Craig Warburton, 13, had just left an after-school dance at Riverview Junior High School welcoming students back from summer break.

He and a group of friends were walking home along Murray Parkway Boulevard near 5900 South when, without warning, a white Porsche 944 Turbo smashed into Warburton and three of his friends. Warburton was killed instantly. Another boy suffered serious injuries including a fractured skull.

During the ensuing trial, there was debate whether the teen driver of the Porsche was drag racing with another teen at the time of the crash or if the race had ended a short time earlier. Regardless, police estimated the speed of the vehicle at 79 mph on the 30 mph road.

The very private Warburton family remained, for the most part, silent during the 2001 accident, the trial and the media coverage surrounding it.

On Thursday, however, Annette Warburton, Craig's mother, will stand with law enforcers from across the Salt Lake Valley launching a new effort to crack down on illegal street racing this summer.

"There is a pervasive attitude that street racing is a harmless thrill, when the truth is by turning public streets into raceways they put the lives of others at risk. Do they want to live the rest of their lives with the very real possibility that their 'need for speed' took the life of, or hurt someone else??If you race, do it legally at a track with class not as a stupid street game," Warburton told the Deseret News Wednesday.

Between May and September of 2008, the Salt Lake Police Department received more than 300 complaints of street racing. But officers note that street racing isn't exclusive to Salt Lake City.

In February of last year, five friends in two vehicles were street racing and drinking near 4700 South and 4000 West. The cars were side-by-side going an estimated 80 to 100 mph when one of the cars crashed, ejecting its occupants, killing one of the passengers.

Thursday, representatives from nearly every law enforcement agency in Salt Lake County will stand united in announcing a crackdown of street racers. Their message to racers is if you're driven out of one city by law enforcement, don't expect to receive any different treatment in another city.

The joint summer effort will be made possible by a new grant, Warburton said.