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From USA Today:

Tenn. officials consider whether to file charges in dragster deaths
By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY
SELMER, Tenn. — State officials in Tennessee said Monday they are investigating whether an accident involving a dragster that spun out during a charity parade, killing six, warrants criminal charges against the driver.
"If I have evidence of a criminal offense … I will charge it," said Mike Dunavant, district attorney general for McNairy County.

At least 20 people were injured, including the driver, professional drag racer Troy Warren Critchley of Wylie, Texas.

The crash occurred at a Cars for Kids charity show, an annual event in the small town of Selmer, Tenn., 80 miles east of Memphis. Drivers do crowd-pleasing burnouts — spinning the tires to make them heat up and smoke — during a parade.

Mike Browning, a spokesman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol said the investigation is in its early stages and will look at "the driver, the car itself, and conditions."

Bereaved family members were upset that no one has been held responsible.

"I want them to look at why they let people stand that close on the side of a road while a car that had no business on a city street plowed into and kill them," said Tracy Harper of Finger, Tenn.

Harper is the aunt of two sisters who died, Raven Griswell, 15, and Nichole Griswell, 19. She said the girls went to the event every year.

"They've always had a burnout part of it, but I don't think they've had a car this menacing, a car of this kind of power that could do what that car could do," she said.

Amateur video of the crash, broadcast on WMC-TV in Memphis, showed the car's engine revving loudly before the vehicle sped down the highway. After a few hundred feet, the smoking car skidded off the road and into the crowd.

The Patrol's criminal investigative division questioned Critchley and his team Sunday and they have been cooperative, Browning said.

Dunavant said charges could range "from some type of traffic offense to homicide, and anything in between," but that it's too early to speculate whether any are warranted.

Investigators are also looking into policy decisions made by city officials overseeing the event, Dunavant said.

"My understanding was that security and safety there was the Selmer police department, the city of Selmer," Dunavant said.

Rodger Pitchford, 18, a spectator who suffered a broken right leg and chipped vertebrae, said two police cars drove down the parade route and advised spectators to move farther back from the road. People heeded the warning initially then moved back up for a better look, he said.

"It was our choice to stand there," he said. "We shouldn't have been that close. If we had stayed back, I don't think that many people would have been injured because we would have had time to move out of the way."