A tractor-trailer driver charged with driving under the influence and vehicular homicide during the string of interstate fatalities here shortly before Thanksgiving has been cleared of the DUI charges after his toxicology report came back clean.
Gustavo Rodriguez-Pagan, 37, of Breinigsville, Pa., was shirtless on a chilly November day and gave ambiguous and contradictory accounts of what had happened after his truck and another big rig collided on I-59 on Nov. 16, killing the other driver, testified Scottie Smith, an accident reconstruction team officer with the Georgia Department of Public Safety. That, and the fact that Rodriguez-Pagan's truck had been traveling north on I-59 and had crossed the median into southbound traffic, causing the fatal accident, had been among the six compelling clues that led law enforcement to bring the impaired-driving charges against Rodriguez-Pagan.
The officer was testifying this morning in a preliminary hearing before Dade Chief Magistrate Joel McCormick. In preliminary hearings in Dade Magistrate Court, law officers present their testimony under questioning by the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney's office. Defendants appear but do not testify, though their attorneys are allowed to question the police officers. In this case, the D.A.'s office was represented by prosecutor Len Gregor, and Rodriguez-Pagan by Jennifer Hartline of the circuit's Public Defender's office.
In light of the exculpatory toxicology report, which was negative for both alcohol and drugs, prosecutor Gregor removed the DUI element from the D.A.'s case against the driver but let the homicide-by-vehicle charge stand, changing its basis to reckless driving. Though Rodriguez-Pagan had not originally in fact been charged with reckless driving, Gregor said the fact that he had failed to maintain his lane and was in fact driving in the wrong direction justified the reckless driving charge.
(Photo courtesy Dade County Sheriff's Office.)
In his introductory testimony, Officer Smith explained that his job was to support Georgia State Patrol troopers in the case of serious accidents. He said he'd come to the Nov. 16 accident scene at the request of a Trooper Williams to find the defendant shirtless and standing outside an ambulance while the other driver (Ralph Elam, 44, of Tillman, S.C., according to the GSP report at the time) was still trapped in his truck but had been pronounced dead at the scene. Both tractors had separated from their trailers. "It was just about completely destroyed," Smith described one of the vehicles.
Rodriguez-Pagan had been driving north on I-59 and Elam south when a witness saw Rodriguez-Pagan's rig cross the median and strike Elam's inside the Trenton city limits. Smith could provide no estimate of the speed of either truck. He had not questioned the defendant himself, he told Magistrate McCormick, but Trooper Williams had and relayed Rodriguez-Pagan's two accounts of the accident.
First, reported Smith, the defendant had said it was the other trucker who had crossed the median and struck him. Then, in a contradictory statement, he had said he'd been traveling north on I-59 and the next thing he could remember was being involved in the accident.
Defense attorney Jennifer Hartline asked Agent Smith. "Is there any reason to have an accident besides being under the influence?" He answered yes, that accidents happen all the time. Ms. Hartline also asked if the accident might not have been caused by a malfunction of the 2011 Volvo tractor-trailer the defendant was driving. Smith said no information had been available from the truck's instruments.
The defense attorney ascertained that though Rodriguez-Pagan had been treated for a scratch on his face he sustained in the accident, he had not been taken to a hospital to be checked out, and she suggested that a medical condition might have contributed to the accident. She also asked if officers interviewing him had asked if English was her client's first language, and pointed out there was no witness account or physical evidence he had been driving recklessly.
Magistrate McCormick removed the DUI charges but bound the others over to Dade Superior Court for a later trial. The defendant, who has been in the Dade jail since the accident, was taken back there pending trial.
