| “ | Death must be answered with death, the Lord commands us. | „ |
| ~ One of Carrie's comments about Todd Bissell. |
Carrie Sands is the secondary antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Human Flesh Search Engine". She is a mentally ill woman who believes that people who text while driving are servants of Satan and should be killed.
She was portrayed by Tina Benko.
Biography[]
Carrie Sands began suffering from extreme schizophrenia at an unknown age. Her delusions initially centred around people being impure and needing to be purified, which led her to offer her young daughter to a local church as a human sacrifice. The church obviously rejected her offer and called Child Protective Services, who took Carrie's daughter away from her.
One day, Carrie saw a taxi driver crash into a trash can because he was texting and driving. Her mental illness combined with grief at the loss of her daughter made her hallucinate that the trash can was actually her daughter. She called the police but they did nothing because they could see that Carrie was delusional. As a result of this incident, Carrie became convinced that people who text and drive were receiving messages from the Devil telling them to kill people.
On August 20th 2008, Carrie assaulted a taxi driver in the middle of 42nd Street, accusing him of murdering her daughter. The incident was reported to police by the taxi driver but she was not arrested.
"Human Flesh Search Engine"[]
Carrie is also a user of FlashPosse, a website that uses internet detectives to identify wrongdoers and punish them with "corrective social action". One day she sees a photo of Sid Maxwell, real name Todd Bissell, texting and driving posted on the site. Carrie is angered by this and posts four hundred comments on the picture calling Bissell a servant of Satan who will be punished by God. Many other users spur Carrie on by saying that Bissell should be killed and posting information including his name, address and front door code. The site's webmaster Jim Leary, who witnessed the incident with the cab driver, emails Carrie to let her know whenever information about Bissell is posted.
She eventually goes to Bissell's apartment and finds him in the middle of autoerotic asphyxiation. She then ties his hands behind his back so that he can't get free, leaving him to suffocate. His body is discovered by the neighbors, and the NYPD open a murder investigation that quickly leads them to FlashPosse. After Leary refuses to hand over information about the users who posted threats against Bissell, Detective Kevin Bernard arranges for Leary to shame him on FlashPosse so he can trace the IP addresses of the suspects.
Carrie is identified as one of the users who threatened Bissell and taken in for questioning. She tells Lieutenant Van Buren that she is embarrassed by what she said about the victim, but that she couldn't help herself because of her daughter's death. Van Buren agrees to investigate what happened to her daughter and tells Carrie that she's free to go, but reads the police report and finds out about her insanity just in time to stop her leaving. Carrie says that Maxwell was getting messages from the Devil, but then demands a lawyer and refuses to say anything else. A search of her apartment turns up enough evidence to charge her with murder, but she is quickly found insane and placed in a mental hospital.
