How the U.S. helped a Peace Corps worker who killed a woman in Africa escape prosecution

An American Peace Corps employee in Tanzania in 2019 killed a mother of three and injured two others in a series of car crashes that began after he left a bar where he had been drinking and brought a sex worker back to his government-leased home. Witnesses pelted the man’s car with rocks and pursued on motorcycles as he fled the scenes of his crimes. The chaotic and deadly episode ended when he slammed into a pole and was detained by police.

But within hours, Peace Corps and U.S. Embassy staff rushed the man onto a plane and out of the country. Tanzanian authorities were unable to charge him first, and the U.S. Department of Justice later declined to file criminal charges because of a lack of jurisdiction.

Family members of Rabia Issa gather Dec. 9 at their home in the Msasani neighborhood of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The man remained on Peace Corps staff for 18 months before resigning in February, the agency said.

The incident was briefly mentioned in a June report to Congress from the Peace Corps Office of Inspector General. But the summary is sparse and lacks key details. It does not say when the incident happened, identify the African nation where it took place, name the employee or say how much in U.S. taxpayer dollars was spent in the aftermath. It also does not identify the woman he killed, who is referred to only as a “street vendor.”

USA TODAY who investigated and published the detailed story  has since interviewed nearly a dozen sources familiar with the Aug. 24, 2019, incident, including Americans who knew of the events at the time and relatives of the woman who was killed, several of whom were at the scene of the crash in Dar es Salaam. The newspaper’s investigation identified the driver as John M. Peterson, then the 65-year-old director of management and operations for the Peace Corps in Tanzania.

Relatives of Rabia Issa have kept this photocopy of John Peterson’s drivers license they said police gave them after her death.

The woman Peterson killed was 47-year-old Rabia Issa, who was the primary breadwinner in her family, according to her relatives. Issa was gathering firewood around dawn at the roadside stand where she sold fried cassava and other foods when a small SUV barreled out of the street and hit her, her sister Hadija Issa said.