Some recent news items. Also, be sure to check out the “cold medicine” guy from a few days ago…
These are the kinds of upgraded gigantic signs that WW drivers must pass to enter freeways.
6/6/2017 double-fatality ~8PM, began driving around airport, including through parking structures the wrong way and breaking through the arm/gate: Wrong way driver 56-year-old Ronald Wayne Mollenhauer killed another driver, Young Lee on a transition ramp between I-10 and SR51. A third driver was injured. Given the ww driver is dead, you probably won’t hear much about this again. Was he impaired by drugs or alcohol, or some other impairment? Most ww drivers are. We’ll have to wait for FARS to find out which will report any chemical testing results. Continue reading More Wrong-way freeway driving; can detection help?→
Cold medicine? maybe, just maybe plain-old drunk. We’ll see. Interesting comment about victim’s rights, and appearing in court
A total of 13 people requested victim’s rights due to the driver using his vehicle as a deadly instrument… During Walker’s initial appearance, one of the alleged victims addressed the judge.
“We were inches from actually crashing into him, and that in itself is an emotional trauma,” the man said. “He’s not safe and he shouldn’t be out in society placing others in danger.”
It’s good to see ordinary people stick up for their rights and hopefully hold dangerous drivers responsible for their actions.
5/5/2017 bicyclist Robert Dale Fox II was killed by driver Melanie Laverne Jones, and arrested on suspicion of 2nd degree murder
suspected and DUI.
The rear end collision occurred on SR95 between Home Depot and the USPS. (~ MP 249)
The outside lane appears to be quite ( ~ 14 feet plus a 2 foot gutter pan) wide, and the bicyclist was thrown into the curb. The motorist was likely swerved toward the curb. The body of that car is ~ 6 feet wide.
Criminal Case
According to a June 8, 2017 Mohave Valley Daily News article, Melanie Luverne Jones is being held in county jail on DUI higher than .20 plus manslaughter charges and has left the public defender in favor of hiring her own lawyer
4/15/2017 ~ 2am. A male wrong-way driver collided headon on the I-17 freeway near Greenway in Phoenix with a vehicle carrying two sisters. All are dead.
[This is an old case: it happened in Tucson before 2009, but it has a bit of a twist… ]
December 1, 2006: A driver plows into the rear end of a bicyclist in a Tuscon-area Bike Lane (or probably more accurately, a shoulder), killing him. The young woman driving is drunk, very drunk. She gets convicted (it’s apparently a plea deal, Pima Co records are crappy, but I see no mention of a trial) of negligent homicide; here’s the twist, a phone call from jail while awaiting sentencing (from what i remember, all jail phone calls are monitored/recorded) causes her to receive the max sentence: Continue reading Spewing Hatred→
Arizona metes out harsh penalties for drunken driving, with mandatory jail time and heavy fines, and Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery said Arizona has steep penalties for good reason
There are tens of thousands of DUI arrests per year in AZ (39,746 in 2013 to be more precise). And that’s not counting the many of the over ten thousand hit-and-run drivers reported each year in AZ (11,402 in 2010 to be more precise), all of whom are criminals, thousands of them serious felons, few of whom are ever caught or charged. (hit-and-run from a collision with any injury is a felony, if the injury is serious or fatal the felony is likewise serious). Continue reading More about: Celebrity DUIs and other car criminals→
The un-named driver’s black BMW at rest inside the heavily damaged restaurant. Driver was charged with DUI.
12/2 ~6:15pm near Thomas Road and 15th Avenue. Nice.
The car drove up the sidewalk and over the curb before colliding with a tree, plowing through a pillar holding up the restaurant’s patio roof and continuing on into the main dining area of the restaurant where eight people sat.
The man was later cited for driving while impaired, police said. His name was not released.
This is the kind of driving that kills bicyclists…
