The Missouri State Highway Patrol knows the name of the 50-year-old Brookfield woman who died Sept. 11 in a three-vehicle crash on U.S. 36 about a mile east of Macon. It left that name off her public crash report.
It did the same Oct. 4, when a 26-year-old Bevier man died in a motorcycle crash on Highway C in Bevier. The online report gave his age, hometown, motorcycle, and injuries. Not his name.
Two press associations, a TV station owner, a newspaper publisher, and an editor want that to stop. They sued the Patrol on Oct. 16 in Cole County Circuit Court and asked a judge to order full, unredacted crash reports.
The plaintiffs are the Missouri Press Association, the Missouri Broadcasters Association, Gray Local Media, Warden Publishing Company, and Warden managing editor Roxie Murphy. They allege the Patrol is violating the Missouri Sunshine Law by redacting names and other details from crash reports.
The Patrol's reasons
The Patrol stopped posting names online at 3 p.m. Nov. 1, 2024. In a release that day, it said it had been told of scams targeting crash victims and people connected to them. The scammers, it said, may have used public databases, including the Patrol's online reports, to sound credible.
The change covered traffic crash reports and boat and drowning reports. Age, gender, injury type, and city and state stayed online. The Patrol said anyone with a legal right to the names can still get them through its Public Records Center, and that the change was consistent with the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act.
What the reports used to say
In March 2024, a car went off eastbound U.S. 36 about 2.5 miles east of Macon, struck a guardrail, and overturned. The Patrol released the names of the 50-year-old New London driver and the 45-year-old Quincy, Illinois, passenger, who was taken to Columbia with serious injuries, and the Hannibal Courier-Post reported them. A 13-year-old passenger was identified by age only.
Compare the Oct. 4 crash about 4 miles west of New Cambria: an 86-year-old Marceline man, an 83-year-old Marceline woman, and a 49-year-old Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, woman. All three went to University Hospital in Columbia. None is named.
What the lawsuit says
The petition says the Patrol gave the public unredacted online crash reports for nearly 30 years. It quotes the agency's old website: "All information on crash reports is considered an 'open record' and cannot be withheld from the public."
Under state law, the petition argues, crash reports are incident reports, and incident reports "shall be open records."
The groups say the redactions go past the website. Since sometime in 2024, according to the petition, the Patrol has also redacted names, addresses, phone numbers, and other details from reports it provides in response to Sunshine Law requests. The filing lists requests made from May through September 2026 that came back redacted, including a Gasconade County crash that killed two people, a drowning at the Lake of the Ozarks, and two crashes involving deer.
In a June 30 response quoted in the petition, the Patrol said personal data was removed "to protect the personal information and to comply with the Federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act."
The groups want full reports both online and in response to records requests. They also seek a civil penalty of up to $1,000 per plaintiff, or up to $5,000 each if the court finds the Patrol violated the law purposely, plus attorney's fees.
Troop B's reports
Troop B, which covers Macon County and much of northeast Missouri, is headquartered in Macon. Its troopers work the crashes on U.S. 36, U.S. 63, and the county's state highways, and the Patrol handles boating and drowning reports at lakes such as Long Branch.
Most Macon County crash news starts with those reports. Chronicle crash stories this fall, from a rollover on U.S. 63 north of La Plata to the two deaths in September and October, drew on Patrol reports that identify people only by age, sex, and hometown.
The press association said named reports help families and neighbors get accurate information and help the public spot dangerous roads. "When the government blacks out the name of someone killed on a public road, it is the whole community that is kept in the dark," Executive Director Chad Stebbins said in the association's release.
What happens next
The case, 26AC-CC00679, is assigned to Judge Daniel Richard Green. A summons to the Patrol was issued Oct. 19. As of Tuesday afternoon, Case.net showed no response from the Patrol.
The Macon Chronicle's publishing company, Chariton Media, is a co-owner of a Missouri Press Association member paper.