Cop dies chasing Bike, rider convicted!/FL

[PeteSC]

This is kind of interesting.
 This is a pretty big case, involving a high speed pursuit of a squid, where the pursuing cop blew a tire, crashes, and dies.
  If I remember correctly, the bike got away, but was caught later.
  The rider was convicted of vehicular homocide today for the death of the cop.
  The cop was retired from a NY department, moves to FL, and continues on as a cop down there, so he wasn't a kid.

  Oh yeah, the rider was riding real squidly as he try to run from the cop.
 He was endangering a lot of lives.
   This is kind of the worse case scenario for running from the cops, and actually surviving yourself, I guess.

Man Convicted Of Causing Trooper's Death

POSTED: 6:22 pm EDT October 18, 2005
UPDATED: 6:39 pm EDT October 18, 2005

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- A Volusia County jury voted Tuesday to convict a man in the death of a Florida state trooper.

Donald Williams was found guilty on three counts, including aggravated manslaughter, vehicular homicide and fleeing and eluding a police officer that results in death, WESH 2 News reported.

Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Darryl Haywood crashed and died last year while chasing Williams, who police said was going at least 100 mph on his motorcycle.

Haywood blew a tire and slammed into a tree along Interstate 4. The defense maintained all along that Williams was speeding, but they claimed that Williams did not know he was being followed by a trooper.
 

The prosecution said Williams knew he was being chased, and they called several witnesses to the stand who said Williams looked over his shoulder as if he knew the deputy was chasing him.

The aggravated manslaughter charge carries 30 years as a possible penalty. Williams could serve up to 15 years for the vehicular homicide conviction and another 30 years for the fleeing and eluding charge.

[PeteSC]

Biker to go to prison

Donald Williams is sentenced to 30 years for the death of Trooper Darryl Haywood in a 2004 crash.
Posted December 3, 2005

 
DAYTONA BEACH -- It only took a few minutes of a high-speed chase on Interstate 4 for two men to lose everything.

Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Darryl Haywood lost his life when he crashed into a tree pursuing a speeding motorcycle.

 
  Donald Williams, 39, who admitted he drove upward of 100 mph on Oct. 2, 2004, lost his freedom. On Friday, Circuit Judge R. Michael Hutcheson sentenced Williams to 30 years in prison on charges of aggravated manslaughter and aggravated fleeing and eluding a law-enforcement officer causing death.

About two dozen troopers attended the sentencing hearing to show their support for Haywood, who joined the agency in 2000 after a 20-year career with the New York Police Department. He was the 39th Florida trooper killed in the line of duty.

"I regret that you have never met anybody like Darryl," the trooper's wife, Linda Haywood, tearfully told Williams. "If you had known him, you would have had more respect for the law on Oct. 2, 2004."

Witnesses for the state and defense described each man as a good person, a loving father and a family man.

"Darryl had a passion for helping people," FHP Maj. Cyrus Brown said. "He wanted to make the world a better place."

Williams took the stand and extended his condolences to Haywood's family.

"Something happened that day that tore two families apart," he said. "It was a bad thing that happened to two good people."

Williams faced up to 60 years for the verdict that was reached last month. Haywood's family, who had requested the maximum, said they were satisfied with the sentence.

"It just can't bring him back," his daughter, Erica Malloy, said.

Williams' family remained "very hopeful" after the hearing.

"I just feel like it's going to be overturned," said Tasha McCray, his ex-wife. "He's a good person, and everything will work out for him."

Williams' sentence in Volusia County will run alongside a sentence from St. Johns County where he received 30 months in prison for aggravated fleeing and eluding for the tail-end of his journey to the Jacksonville area.

Williams was going to visit his 16-year-old daughter that day.

She had called asking him to make the drive from Hillsborough County, where Williams lives.

"I feel like it's my fault he's in this mess," Shuantavia Williams told the judge. "I want him to come home."

During a break in the three-hour hearing, one of Williams' longtime friends approached Haywood's widow with a hug.

"I'm sorry for the decision he made," Stella Canty told Linda Haywood.

[Oldschooler]

What the media has decided not to put in print is once another trooper caught up to him and pulled next to him, he glaced over at the trooper then gassed it!
So much for the " I'm just a good guy and didn't know I was being chased" theory.

[PeteSC]

I figured there had to be more to it, but I have no sympathy for the rider, anyway.  If you run, you takes your chances!   Bad stuff usually happens.

[Oldschooler]

Well I could almost feel for the rider, almost. I think we all spin up our Bandits from time to time. If farther down the road you learn a trooper, or city cop, etc died because he saw you and was trying to catch up to you, I think any of us on this board would feel rotten. But this guy can't try to play that card because of the little stunt he pulled when the other trooper caught up to him.
It's all around bad. Troopers family has no father or husband, and the public looks at this story and will pass judgement on ALL non Harley type riders.
Next time I open it up and wiz by some cars even for a sort run they'll peg me as a squid!
 

[Sven]

While I'm all for showing respect for law enforcement officers, as long as they are behaving in a respectable manner, I have to ask: Who contributed to the death of the cop?  Pretty much...the cop.

Did the squid force the cop to chase him at a speed he could not control or did the cop CHOOSE to do so?  Did the cop use prudence in chasing someone whose crime was, after all, simply speeding?  Isn't this similar to those cases where a cop runs over someone while chasing someone else?  

Between chasing someone to give him a speeding ticket and dying, or letting the guy go and hoping to find him later, the cop made the wrong choice.  I don't care what the law says, he made a foolish decision and paid for it.  He wasn't chasing a kidnapper, or a terrorist.  This is just another case of our insane US legal system which says we are never responsible for our own actions...it's always someone else's fault.

(Gosh, I'm not sounding much like my usual liberal self there, am I?)

[Oldschooler]

Yeah good points! I can only assume that since he was driving a police package Camaro the car should have had the ability. The flip side of that is us cop'ers go through emergency vehicle operation but that training doesn't address vehicle dynamics and handling at triple digit speeds. So, unless you do quiet a bit of that type of driving ( which a state trooper operating daily on the highway might ) you aren't going to be very well prepared once the car gets out of shape at those speeds.

The other danger is speed is relative. Meaning when you and the person you are trying to catch are both going the same speeds it doesn't feel as dangerous as it is. An example is your chasing a guy going 120 and so are you. He tags the brakes and hammers 40mph off his speed. You feel the 40mph difference and it feels much slower than you were going. The trouble is you’re still actually going 80mph!!

Boy I could go on and on with this but I'm gonna shut up.   :suzmoto:

[PeteSC]

Yeah, we've gone over the various 'fuzzy points' about this before.
   It's easy to see that the cop kind of gets excused for his mistakes.

 I do crank it up at times.   Suppose I'm on a totally empty road, doing 120 or so, and a cop appears from nowhere and starts chasing me.
A deer runs out in front of him, and he loses it and gets killed.
   Does this mean  I could get nailed for the cops death?

   They just enacted a law here that allows cops to stop you solely for not wearing a seatbelt.   What if a cop notices me going the other way with no seatbelt, does a uturn in front of a tractor trailer, and  gets killed while attempting to stop me and give me a $25 ticket.  Am I guilty of murder?

  Dunno. Yeah, it's a stretch.   I'm sure the reasoning for charging you for what happens to the cop will have to be more clearly and reasonably defined.
 Probably in the FL situation, the guy deserved it....and they wanted to make an example out of him.

   The bottom line is, I'm not going to run.  I'm stupid enough to do something somewhat stupid, but smart enough to realize 'hey, if I do one more stupid thing, this situation is gonna snowball..."

[Sven]

Boy I could go on and on with this but I'm gonna shut up.

Hey, personal experience is interesting, share whatever you think is worth sharing!

[zaptoman]

I'd always say that the penalty has to fit the crime. The guy deserves to be penalized for speeding, and for negligence/driving like a moron, but he doesn't deserve the rap of killing the cop. He didn't. The cop died, and thats an unfortunate and traumatic thing, especially for his family, but the biker didn't kill him.

[EODSarge]

Had the squid pulled over as he was lawfully required, none of this would have happened. The perp initiates the chase, not the police, when he makes the decision to run. Someone died as a result. I have no sympathy whatsoever for him.

[banditoverde]

Did the squid force the cop to chase him at a speed he could not control or did the cop CHOOSE to do so?  Did the cop use prudence in chasing someone whose crime was, after all, simply speeding?  Isn't this similar to those cases where a cop runs over someone while chasing someone else?  

This may sound simplistic and it is a bit simplistic but if they run we chase.  Not just because they are driving fast but because they are running for a reason.  The last pursuit I was in started because of a bad lane change.  When the bad guy finally ran his car into the ground and decided that his two feet were no match for the 5 guns being pointed at him, we figured out that he was a parolee at large driving a stolen car with stolen plates.  Did I know all this when I started chasing? No. Should I have terminated the pursuit when it topped the ton on the freeway? Would society have been better served if I had let Mr. Parolee scum bag stay free?  Would we all be better off if bad guys know that all they have to is stomp on it because the cops won't chase them?  The bad guys get away with enough stuff as it is.  I dont want to let them get away with more if I can help it.  Yup, pursuits are dangerous. Yup, people get hurt and that sucks.  Personally I think that if you run you need to pay a hefty runners fee starting with when the cop yanks you through the vents and ending 5-10 years later when you leave prison.  

This dead cop chose to chase for the same reason he might choose to wade into a bar fight or point guns at bank robbers or stop to give a little kid a police sticker.  He was wired that way.  He got unlucky, experienced a bad equipment failure and wasn't good enough or lucky enough to pull it through.  Who's to blame? The cop was doing what regular people want and pay him to do.  The crook didn't have to run.  He just didn't have the stones or the brains to stop and take whatever lumps he earned for riding too fast.  Let him pay.

OK, I'm off my soap box now.
By the way I only sound like a right wing knee jerker sometimes.  Personally I'd like to see about half of the laws on the books repealed and used for toilet paper. And yes I too have wound it out on empty and not so empty roads.  I also stopped when to cop told me to.

[Oldschooler]

Didn’t know if this news story made it out of our local area but here's a scary carma thing.
Trooper Haywood's son following in his fathers footsteps became a Florida State Trooper. (I’m getting old because he looks like he should still be in school! HA) here’s the scary part. His son was driving down I-4 and he had a faulty tire that blew out. His Crown Vic skidded off the road and into a guardrail. The car was a crumpled total mess. His son survived and is going threw some physical therapy and plans to return to duty as soon as he can. Can you imagine how freaking frightening that news had to be for his mother? I wonder if dad had a part in just how that car hit the guardrail, keeping his son alive!


http://www.fhp.state.fl.us/PhotoGallery/PG012306a.htm

[Red01]

Well, from reading that link, sounds like Haywood Jr. was stopped on the shoulder with a Hyundai when a Dodge truck rear ended him. No blow-out seems to be involved in this one... unless it was the Dodge truck (the article doesn't say if anything caused the truck to crash into Trooper Haywood, Jr's car.

[Oldschooler]

Yes I stand corected!     I was getting the two stories al mixed up !