A prosecutor is trying his ways to urge the jury to convict a man from a suburban New York to the charges of vehicular manslaughter, driving while intoxicated and other charges regarding a police officer's death and notwithstanding on the fact that another driver hit and killed the said responding police officer.
During the closing argument at the trial, Assistant District Attorney Maureen McCormick accused James Ryan " drove wildly, recklessly and drunk," when he caused two crashes on the Long Island Expressway "into his own drunken speedway", Fox News reported. According to the police, Nassau County Police Officer Joseph Olivieri was responding to one of the crashes when he was struck and killed by another driver.
Legal experts were also closely monitoring the trial as they say it is one rare case as for someone other than a driver directly involved in a deadly car crash to be indicted. The district lawyers in charge of the case are also applying the legal principle of causation/foresee ability, stating "suspects are charged in events that are foreseeable results of their actions."
The Daily Mail reported, Ryan, 28 years old is a part-time student created the chaotic accident resulted to the death of Officer Olivieri. McCormick said, they are the natural, foreseeable consequences of Ryan's actions and he owns them. According to the reports, Ryan's vehicle, Toyota hit a BMW on the Long Island expressway, halted 1,500 feet down the road in the high-occupancy lane and then was struck by another vehicle.
Later on, a driver on an SUV had not seen Ryan's vehicle, which positioned sideways from the earlier crash accident, smashed into the Ryan's Toyota vehicle, which eventually struck the said police officer. ABC News reported, Ryan's defense lawyer admitted that his client had been drinking on a bar in Manhattan and which was also seen on blood alcohol level. However, the lawyer insisted that the driver of SUV was also driving his way recklessly that failed him to avoid the car accident wreckage ahead.
Francis Belizaire, the SUV driver testified at the trial that he was driving 30 to 40 mph in the left-hand HOV as he approaches all the way through the car crash scene. "There were no lights on that vehicle for me to try to avoid it," he said. A state judge dismissed the indictment, finding it "solely attributable to Belizaire. Jury will start its deliberations on Tuesday.
