[G2:104 class=g2image_float_left]Raymond Garner was driving drunk and speeding on I-75 nearly one year ago when he lost control of his pick-up truck and crashed into two vehicles heading south for a family vacation.
The crash claimed the life of an Ohio woman, who was seven months pregnant, and her unborn son, whom she planned to name Nathan.
The crash also decapitated 8-year-old Gus Pontikis, who was in the back of a second vehicle as his 10-year-old brother, Nicholas, sat beside him, and as his father, Peter, drove.
Attorneys for both sides told jurors during their opening statements at Garner’s trial Tuesday morning that there isn’t much disagreement about the factual evidence in the case.
Garner has already pleaded guilty to drunk driving and driving on a suspended license.
It was suspended about two months before the crash because of another drunk driving charge.
Garner was previously convicted of driving under the influence on May 7, 2007 in Clark County, and on Feb. 12, 2003 in Boone County, according to his indictment.
The question before the eight-man, five-woman jury is whether Garner is guilty of wanton murder in the deaths of Gus Pontikis and 25-year-old Cindy Haas, and of fetal homicide in the death of Haas’ unborn son, or whether he should be found guilty of a lesser offense, such as second-degree manslaughter or reckless homicide.
Murder carries a possible sentence of up to life in prison, compared with second-degree manslaughter, which has a maximum sentence of 10 years behind bars. The maximum penalty for reckless homicide is five years.
Garner is also charged with four counts of first-degree assault in connection with serious injuries others suffered in the crash.
Garner’s lawyer, David Hoskins, told jurors that he doesn’t expect them not to convict his client.
“He is a man who is devastated and tormented every day by what he has done,” Hoskins said. “Raymond Garner is not a murderer. We expect you to find him guilty, but not of murder.”
Based upon the evidence presented during the first day of the trial, Hoskins may have difficulty convincing jurors that his client should be convicted on a lesser charge.
Testimony so far
A Georgia truck driver, who Garner sped by right before the crash, testified that he spoke with Garner afterwards and allowed him to use his cell phone to make a call.
The truck driver remembers Garner, who was moving at the time, talking about losing nearly everything he owned in the crash.
Two witnesses testified that they heard Garner claim that he wasn’t even driving the vehicle, which was his. They say Garner claimed that he picked up a hitchhiker, who he let drive because he had been drinking.
Garner told the witnesses that the hitchhiker apparently ran off after the accident.
Whitley County EMS Assistant Director Sheila Norman, who was one of the people Garner told the story to, treated him at the scene and said he only suffered scratches from the wreck.
Witnesses said Garner’s truck was mangled in the crash and that the cab of the pick-up had been separated from the rest of the truck.
Norman also testified that Garner told her he had been drinking all day.
Blood work taken over two hours after the crash showed that Garner had a blood alcohol level of .18, Commonwealth’s Attorney Allen Trimble told jurors during his opening statement.
Under Kentucky law, a person is considered legally intoxicated with a blood alcohol level of .08.
Hoskins said the blood work would also show that Garner had valium in his system too, but that he had a prescription for the drug.
Trimble told jurors that one new piece of evidence in this trial would be testimony concerning a black box in Garner’s vehicle that records information five seconds prior to an airbag deploying.
By 2012, the devices will be standard on all vehicles, he added.
Trimble said that evidence from the black box will show that Garner was going 93 mph when he struck a guardrail, and then crossed into the median and went airborne.
“He was applying 100 percent to the accelerator. He never applied the brakes,” Trimble said.
Garner’s vehicle was still going over 80 mph hour when it struck the Pontikis vehicle and then the Haas vehicle.
The Haas vehicle flipped over during the crash.
Opening statement
Hoskins told jurors during his opening statement that on July 9, 2007, Raymond Garner was going through major changes in his life.
Garner, who was an alcoholic like his father and grandfather before him, had just gone through a bitter divorce.
He had sold his home in Norris, Tenn., and was moving in with a friend in northern Kentucky, who himself had recently come through a lot of personal problems.
Hoskins said the two men would go to church together.
The truck Garner was driving that evening was relatively new to Garner and one he had recently acquired.
He said there was good reason prior to the crash to believe that Garner was starting the beginning of another life.
Survivors testify
Jurors heard from three adults Tuesday, who were in the vehicles Garner struck.
Peter Pontikis testified that he saw a truck weaving in the northbound lane just south of Williamsburg as the family was headed to South Carolina for a vacation.
“I said out loud to my sons, ‘there’s a drunk driver,’ he testified.
Pontikis said he accelerated after he saw the truck go into the median, but couldn’t escape the crash.
“It was coming so fast, the vehicle coming towards us,” he said. “I remember my son, Nick, saying, ‘Oh my God!’ Then there was the crash.”
After the crash, Pontikis said he heard his son, Nick, screaming but no sound from Gus, who was sitting directly behind him. He then asked Nick how Gus was.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Gus doesn’t have a head,'” Peter Pontikis testified.
Cindy Haas mother, Tammy Sue Haas, testified that she, Tammy, four grandchildren, and a family friend were on their way to Sevierville to visit family prior to the crash, which happened shortly before 9 p.m. on July 9, 2007.
Cindy was driving the vehicle.
Tammy Haas said she saw a truck in the northbound lane swerving, looked away, and then the crash happened.
The next thing she remembers was standing in the vehicle with one of the kids outside and the rest inside.
“The first thing I asked is where is Cindy? Tammy testified.
When Tammy exited the vehicle she saw Cindy laying on the ground, and “wanted to believe” that she was still breathing.
She then went back and forth between the children trying to attend to them as best she could.
All three of Cindy’s children are now living with Tammy Haas.
She testified that one of the children had an eye hanging out of the socket after the crash, and later had to have a metal plate put in her head.
Another grand child was in a coma for two months before waking up. He is now three grade levels behind and had to learn to walk and talk again.
“He’s really not the same any more,” she said.
The third grandchild had to have surgery to repair a broken eye socket and his spleen. He was in the hospital for one month.
Debbie White, who was riding in the front passenger seat of the Haas vehicle, noticed the swerving truck in the northbound lane. There was no time to react.
“About that time, it was in our window,” she testified. “I remember glass shattering and screams. I remember how loud it hit. The impact was like an explosion. I felt myself turning and suddenly it stopped.”
When White looked for Cindy, “there was no driver’s side and she was there,” she testified
The trial is expected to wrap up later this week.
