in trial of deadly driver
By BOB HIGH
Statements by five witnesses over the past three days that Jose Jesus Garcia Lopez acknowledged he was driving a Jeep in a fatal head-on crash in December 2004 have clouded the defense’s strategy that Lopez can’t remember the event.
Defense attorney Scott Dorman’s opening statement to the jury noted that Lopez “admits he was driving impaired” and is going to testify that he can’t remember because of a blow to his head in the crash. “His brother was driving and the Jeep’s airbag saved him from severe injuries. Mr. Lopez doesn’t know where his brother is,” Dorman added.
The most telling statement by prosecution witnesses was related Wednesday in the Mexican national’s second-degree murder trial when Highway Patrol Sgt. Will Thurston repeated his conversation with the 34-year-old Lopez.
Thurston said he was the first trooper to speak to Lopez after he emerged from the woods 7/10 of a mile from the scene and nearly 90 minutes after the Dec. 19, 2004 crash on N.C. Highway 904 that took the life of Natalie Renee Housand, 20, of Tabor City.
The trooper said Lopez, bloody and still bleeding from head and facial wounds, wouldn’t make eye contact with him and mumbled answers to questions.
“I finally got down in his face to make eye-to-eye contact and I told him, ‘You know you killed that girl back there!’” Lopez cursed the victim and added, “I don’t care,” Thurston related.
The jury was shocked at the statement and all of them looked at Lopez.
Testimony by a firefighter, an emergency-room doctor and two other Highway Patrol troopers place Lopez behind the wheel of his 1994 Jeep that sideswiped one vehicle before slamming into the left front of Housand’s Mazda Protégé in the woman’s lane nearly 18 months ago.
Fireman’s testimony
Earl Browder of the Pireway community, a volunteer fireman, said he was notified at 6:03 p.m. of the crash and was on the scene – with his son Ryland -- from his home 1.5 miles away in two minutes.
Browder said he went to the overturned Jeep in the middle of the road and saw a man lying on his back on the shoulder of the highway bleeding and seemingly unconscious.
The fireman said he went up the road more than 150 feet to a car in the ditch with a woman driver and a male passenger. The woman was unresponsive.
Browder said he continued beyond Housand’s vehicle to a Camaro that was also in the ditch and found no apparent injury from the driver and returned to where the Jeep was located.
By this time, Lopez was standing with a blanket around his shoulders and two other Hispanic men were with him. Lopez gave no response to Browder’s query if he was the driver, and didn’t reply to a question if he was the passenger. “I asked him a third question, if there was anyone else in the car and he said, ‘No,’”Browder added.
The fireman said he left again and walked back to where Housand was trapped in her car, and when he returned in a few minutes Lopez had disappeared. Browder said one of the Hispanic males told him Lopez had gone into the woods to relieve himself.
Emerges from woods
Ryland Browder testified that he ran around the Jeep checking for other occupants and then moved to the Mazda and stayed there because of Housand’s condition to shield her from the view of others. He noted Housand’s boyfriend Adam Melton of Whiteville had crawled out of the car from his passenger seat.
Earl Browder’s wife Shirley Goff, the third firefighter in the family, testified she was directing traffic at the Bill Long Road intersection 7/10 of a mile east of the wreck scene and Velvet Wheeler, a friend who lives nearby, was with her.
It was 7:50 p.m. Lopez had disappeared from the wreck scene by 6:28 p.m. Wheeler and the firefighter sensed someone and both turned and looked. “He was standing there, all bloody. He mumbled something in pretty good English about somebody breaking into his home and stealing his truck,” Goff noted.
Goff said Lopez said he didn’t need a doctor and asked the women for a ride. Wheeler testified she asked Lopez several questions and he replied to them all in English. “He can talk pretty good English,” Wheeler said of Lopez, who has been furnished an interpreter by the state.
Dr. Jaime Quinones was the emergency room doctor who treated Lopez at Columbus Regional Healthcare and testified that he had a conversation in English with Lopez.
“He told me he was the driver. He did not seem confused and gave appropriate answers to my questions,” Quinones noted. The doctor said his records showed it was 9:44 p.m.
Hospital interview
Highway Patrol Trooper Brian Ezzell took Lopez to the hospital and was with him in the emergency room when nurses and Quinones tended to the man’s injuries.
Ezzell said he heard Lopez tell the doctor he was the driver and ducked out of the cubicle and got a piece of paper and jotted down the conversation.
The trooper said Lopez answered each question without hesitation, and all the conversation was in English. Ezzell said Lopez told the doctor he lost control of the Jeep when he was asked what happened.
Trooper Ronald Hester, the lead investigator of the wreck, said he interviewed Lopez in the emergency room and responses to his questions were in “pretty good, easy to understand English.”
Hester said Lopez was cooperative and agreed to have a blood sample drawn so it could be tested for alcohol content.
The trooper admitted that he did not read Lopez his rights before beginning his questions about the wreck, his physical condition and drinking of beer as he read Lopez’s statements from a driving while impaired form.
Judge Ola Lewis ruled that Hester’s failure to read Lopez his rights would have no effect on statements about Lopez being the driver because several statements about Lopez driving the Jeep had been entered on the record by non-law enforcement people and all of them were prior to his being in custody.
Witnesses to crashes
Aaron and Shannon Stocks of the Guideway community testified they saw the three-vehicle crash. “My wife was driving and I saw this vehicle coming at us and I grabbed the wheel and got our car off onto the edge of the shoulder,” Aaron Stocks noted.
He said the Jeep appeared to be traveling “at least 100” mph and he turned and saw it sideswipe the first vehicle behind them before crashing into the Mazda.
Shannon Stocks said she glanced into her rear-view mirror and saw the crashes and estimated the speed of the Jeep between 80 and 85. She said she went to the Mazda and to Housand’s side of the car and checked her pulse and began praying.
Adam Melton, administrator of the Shoreland Nursing facility in Whiteville and Housand’s boyfriend, said the couple had been dating for five months.
Melton said they were returning to Columbus County that night from dinner “at the beach,” and going to Tabor City to get Housand’s younger brother.
Melton said he glanced to the side out of his window and all of a sudden there was a violent impact and the Mazda was spinning. He testified he didn’t hear Housand make any comment at all about the approaching Jeep. There was no outcry from her.
“She was non-responsive and I was basically fine. I climbed out a hole in the windshield and was going to get help when the firefighter arrived,” Melton related.
Melton said he thought he had recovered from some broken ribs and the trauma of the event, but still has anxiety attacks and is still in counseling. He said he and Housand were conversing about their plans for Christmas just before the crash.
Lopez repentant
Victor Garcia Lopez, the defendant’s brother and the one the defense says was driving the Jeep, appeared at the Highway Patrol office in Whiteville the day after the wreck and gave a statement to Hester. His remarks were not allowed on the record until the defense presents its case.
Loretta Nunez of the Tabor City Rescue Squad said she saw Lopez at the Bill Long Road intersection and he was repentant and kept repeating, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
Coroner Linwood Cartrette testified that Housand died of “multiple trauma.”
Dr. Richard Wagner Jr., a chemist for the State Bureau of Investigation, told the court that Lopez’s blood-alcohol level was 0.12 in the sample – taken at the hospital nearly four hours after the crash.
Dr. Paul Glover, a research scientist dealing in the testing of breath and blood for alcohol and drugs, said Lopez’s blood-alcohol level was “at least 0.18” at the time of the wreck.
He agreed with defense attorney Scott Dorman that an alcoholic blackout may cause memory loss, but said this usually comes when the alcohol content is 0.25 or higher.
Trooper Tony Parrish, a member of Troop B’s reconstruction team, showed many photos of the wreck scene and the vehicles to the jury, explaining how the reconstruction of the wreck took place in May 2005.
Parrish noted the driver’s airbag deployed in the Jeep and there was no blood anywhere in the Jeep, plus the seat belts had not been used. He also noted the left front of the Jeep had been crushed in 31 inches by the impact.
The trial continues today (Thursday).