Rashad Owens charged with capital murder in deadly SXSW crash

The 21-year-old from Killeen, about 70 miles north of Austin, remains in police custody after a district court judge set his bail at $3 million. Jail records did not list an attorney for him.

After being treated and released for minor injuries sustained in the crash, Owens agreed to a breath test and it showed his blood-alcohol content as .114, according an arrest affidavit. The legal limit in Texas in .08.

The officer who tried to stop Owens was looking for suspected drunken drivers when he spotted a 2012 gray Honda Civic that didn’t have its headlights turned on, the arrest warrant says. The officer then initiated the traffic stop after Owens made a turn out of a wrong lane, nearly colliding with a police cruiser, the warrant said.

By that time, Owens was in the southbound lanes of the Interstate 35 frontage road near Ninth Street. Owens pulled the car he was driving into a Shell gas station but then continued on, driving the wrong way on Ninth Street, the affidavit said.

Owens told officers he saw the lights in his mirror and got scared because he had warrants out for his arrest and did not want to go to jail, the document said. Owens said he had a kidnapping warrant and told police he was in a custody battle over his daughter, the warrant said.

After driving the wrong way down Ninth Street, Owens rammed through a barricade at Red River Street set up to divide SXSW crowds and traffic, forcing another police officer manning the roadblock to dive out of the way.

While reviewing video of the crash, police say Owens accelerated into crowds of people for nearly three blocks along Red River Street and did not hit his brakes, the document said.
The warrant says video “shows the Honda accelerating into crowds, not simply crowded areas but crowds of people who are hit by the car and flung into the air.”

At the intersection of 11th and Red River, Owens’ car slammed into a cyclist, a motorcycle and a taxi. Police say he continued on, driving onto a sidewalk and into a parking lot where it struck a van. Owens then ran from the vehicle, according to the affidavit.

An Austin police officer was able to catch up to Owens and used a stun gun on Owens to stop the pursuit and arrest him, the warrant said.

Jamie West, 27, of Austin, was killed when the car Owens was driving struck the motorcycle she was riding on with her husband. Steven Craenmehr, 35, of the Netherlands was also killed. He was riding a bicycle when the car crashed into him. Craenmehr was in Austin for SXSW.

Sandy Le died days later from injuries she sustained in the crash.

Owens pleaded guilty in November 2011 to intoxicated driving after a hit-and-run incident in Alaska. Records show Owens was charged with misdemeanor DWI and leaving the scene of an accident after an incident Oct. 17, 2011, in Fairbanks. The prosecution dismissed the second charge at the time.
Owens also faced 2012 charges in Alaska of criminal mischief, and a warrant was issued for him after he failed to appear in court. In 2010, meanwhile, he was arrested in Texas by Killeen Independent School District police for criminal trespassing and pleaded guilty.

There is a long legal road ahead for the Owens. KXAN Legal Analyst Mindy Montford took a deeper look at why he faces two counts of capital murder.

Alcohol involved in fatal crash

The driver in a fatal car accident that killed three Sam Houston State University students last month had a blood alcohol content level more than twice the legal limit in Texas, autopsy and toxicology reports show.

The Houstonian student newspaper first reported on Thursday results from the autopsy conducted by Montgomery County Forensic Services.

Bianca Espinal, 19, was the driver in the Dec. 14 accident at the intersection of Bowers Boulevard and Avenue I on the SHSU campus. Espinal, Eric Torres, 22, and Alfonso Mata, 20, all died at the scene.

Espinal, according to the autopsy, had a blood alcohol level of .21g/100mL, and 2.0 ng/mL of tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive found in marijuana.

University Police Sgt. Ronald Cleere told the Item on Thursday that investigators are still waiting for an advanced reconstruction report that would give them a more accurate idea of how fast the vehicle was traveling at the time of the incident.

The Texas Department of Transportation crash report shows the 2006 Chevrolet Impala traveled northbound in the 2000 block of Avenue I “at a high rate of speed” when the front left tire struck the traffic island on the north side of the intersection at Bowers Boulevard.

The vehicle crossed into the landscaped area on the east end of Academic Building 4, struck a light post and handrail before going airborne.

“It’s the ultimate consequence to pay for consuming alcohol and driving,” Cleere said. “The ultimate bad outcome of this is death and it happened to students at this university. It’s really sad.”

Torres, according to the crash report, was partially ejected through the sun roof.

The Houstonian also reported SHSU officials admitting fault to misidentifying Roberto Rodriguez Guerra as one of the three students who died in the crash. UPD Chief Kevin Morris said the department made a mistake after identifying a piece of property that belonged to Guerra found on Mata.

Guerra told police that it was his iPod, which contained a copy of his class schedule and student ID, that police mistook for the victim’s identification.

There was one lone survivor, 23-year-old Thomas Roling, who the crash report indicates extracted himself from the vehicle and waited for emergency responders before being treated at Huntsville Memorial Hospital.

Police were dispatched to the accident shortly before 5 a.m., Saturday Dec. 14, just hours before SHSU held commencement ceremonies at Johnson Coliseum, a block away from the deadly scene.

ADAI makes effort to prevent similar incidents.

SHSU Alcohol and Drug Abuse Initiative Coordinator Edward Gisemba said even before the crash, the ADAI looked into relaunching a designated driver incentive program. Gisemba said the program, which faded years ago, saw positive reviews initially, but had poor marketing.

ADAI is reaching out to local bars to get them to hang banners outside their businesses to promote responsible drinking.

“Obviously it’s a tragedy that has hit many of the people in Student Services very hard, myself especially because this is the very thing I’m trying to prevent,” Gisemba said. “What we’re trying to do to the best of our ability is look forward and try to determine how to avoid this from ever happening again. And we’ll do that on a number of fronts.”

Gisemba said in discussions with colleagues at SHSU, there’s talk of something similar to the Texas A&M carpooling system that runs Thursday through Saturday, taking students home from bars.
But Gisemba also mentioned the importance of empowering bystanders and peers to effectively deter friends from drinking and driving.

“Even more so than a program to promote safety and responsibility, we need to be able to show students how important it is to prevent one another from drinking and driving,” Gisemba said. “We can have a program with certain hours of operation, but ultimately people might drink and need to get home at a time that’s not within that window. We want them to make the responsible decision.”



Source: The Huntsville Item, "Alcohol involved in fatal crash," Brandon K. Scott, January 17, 2014

Texas Court Holds Employer Not Liable for Employee’s Death Due to Driving While Intoxicated

A Texas state appeals court has ruled employers are not required to protect their intoxicated employees from injury or death, provided the employer played no role in the employee’s intoxication.  Clark v. EOG Resources Inc., 12-CV-00262 (Tex. App. Houston 1st Dist. Jan. 7, 2014).

Robbie Lynn Clark, an employee of a contractor for EOG Resources, Inc., was killed in a fatal car crash while driving a Company truck back to work after his lunch break.  Toxicology reports indicated Clark was intoxicated, with a blood alcohol reading of over 4 times the legal limit.   Following the accident, Clark’s family sued EOG for negligence and wrongful death, claiming EOG failed to enforce its policy prohibiting drinking while on the job and negligently failed to investigate whether Clark had a history of driving while intoxicated before allowing him to drive a Company vehicle.

Clark, who had a long history of driving while intoxicated, was hired by a contractor for EOG two weeks after he was released from prison for his fourth DWI conviction.  He submitted a driving record report with his application, but the report (which was labeled as “for insurance purposes only”) only included three years of driving history.  As Clark’s most recent DWI conviction was 6 years earlier, it did not show up on the report.

Six months after he began working with EOG, Clark was arrested again for driving while intoxicated and his license was suspended.  Clark failed to report the conviction to EOG, however, and continued to drive without a license.  He died ten months later.

The lawsuit alleged EOG had a duty to closely scrutinize Clark’s employment history before allowing him to drive a Company vehicle.  Had EOG done so, according to Clark’s family, it might have discovered  in Clark’s employment as a result of serving prison sentences for his DWI convictions.  The suit further alleged that EOG failed to adequately enforce its own policy prohibiting drinking on the job.

The trial court dismissed the case on a motion for summary judgment.  It found EOG did not have any control over Clark’s decision to drink and drive.  The appeals court affirmed.  Though the court recognized that Texas case law has found employers can be liable, under certain circumstances, to third parties injured in a car crash by an intoxicated employee, it found no such liability existed here.  Absent a showing that EOG knowingly exerted control over an intoxicated Clark or encouraged or required him to consume alcohol while at work, as an employer it did not “owe a duty to prevent [an] employee from injuring himself through his own intoxicated driving of a company vehicle during a lunch break.”

Source: National Law Review, "Texas Court Holds Employer Not Liable for Employee’s Death Due to Driving While Intoxicated," Kathryn J. Barry, January 12, 2014