Fatal crash: Trucker’s trial is postponed
By The Emporia Gazette (Contact)
Friday, December 22, 2006
A jury trial has been scheduled for 9 a.m., Feb. 12 in Harvey County District Court for an Emporia truck driver who was involved in a fatal accident in 2004.
The trial was continued this month after a motion hearing on behalf of J.B. Miser of Emporia, 64, who is accused of two counts of vehicular homicide in the deaths of Lori B. Leeders, 42, and Brandi R. Billbe, 40. The women died in a multiple-vehicle accident on May 20, 2004, near a construction zone on U.S. Highway 50 near Peabody.
Vehicular homicide is a misdemeanor charge.
Miser first was charged in Marion County. Charges were dropped and re-filed in Harvey County when it was discovered the collision actually occurred in Harvey County.
Law enforcement officials allege that Miser failed to stop his semi-tractor trailer at the entrance to the construction zone, and that his vehicle crashed into a van that carried Leeders and Billbe.
The patrol said that the van, driven by Billbe, was slowing or stopped about three miles west of Peabody, where the construction had limited traffic to one lane. Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Mike Ottensmeier said earlier that Miser apparently was driving too fast he approached the construction zone and struck the van from behind.
The collision spun the van sideways and caused it to hit the back of a Federal Express truck, which in turn struck a sedan in front of the FedEx truck. Neither of those drivers was injured.
The accident report stated that neither Billbe nor Leeders was wearing a seat belt. They were thrown from the van.
The construction area was the scene of three fatal accidents in less than two months.
Another truck driver, Michael W. Hardwick of El Paso, Texas, also was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide as a result of an accident on June 28, 2004, on Highway 50 east of Peabody.
Hardwick was found not guilty after a jury trial in September 2006 in Marion County.
A third truck driver, Richard F. Duncan of Granite City, Ill., was charged with five counts of vehicular homicide in the same construction area on June 29, 2004.
He pleaded guilty and was convicted of five counts. Duncan currently is serving a sentence in the Big Muddy River Correctional Facility south of Ina, Ill.
Duncan was sentenced to a 30-month term that will be served in Illinois and Kansas. Karen Selznick, office manager of the Marion County District Court, said that 24 months of the Kansas term will be served concurrent to the sentence he is serving in Illinois. When he has completed his prison term there, he will be brought back to Kansas to serve six months in the Marion County Jail.
Duncan pleaded guilty on Oct. 16.