The man accused of killing 20-year-old Rachel Hall in a two-vehicle crash had never driven the road before the accident.
Donald Petitt of Ozawkie took the witness stand in his own defense Tuesday in Lyon County District Court. Petitt is charged with vehicular homicide in the July 9, 2007, death of Hall. Jury instructions and closing arguments were set to begin at 9 a.m. today.
Under questioning by defense attorney Trevor Riddle of Wichita, Petitt recounted his 14 years of experience as a CDL Class A licensed driver, and his nine years of experience driving concrete trucks.
He had worked for Penny’s Concrete in Emporia for about 2 1/2 months before the accident, and said that July 9, 2007, was the first day he had gone to the Westar plant under construction on Road 190 between Roads U and S.
That day, he made three deliveries of concrete to the plant, using Road S on the west side of the area to enter and to leave the property.
On the second trip, he said, he encountered heavy traffic going toward the plant and needed to drive in the ditch for the trucks to be able to pass each other.
Riddle asked why Petitt had used Road S to go back to Emporia after the deliveries. Petitt responded that Road S had been the road he took to get to the plant, and he was unfamiliar with the area.
“So I didn’t get lost,” he said.
He left the plant after the third delivery and turned east to take Road U for the first time.
“On the previous loads on the way out, there was a lot of trucks coming,” Pettit said, explaining that another driver told him on the radio to take Road U out of the plant.
Petitt’s last load was the 45th of 51 or 52 concrete trucks that were scheduled to deliver 510 yards of concrete that day. The maximum amount of concrete that can be hauled by one of the trucks is 10 yards.
Assistant County Attorney Nick Heiman questioned Petitt in cross examination, asking him about what a driver with his years of experience would do if he encountered dust on an unfamiliar road.
“If you are unfamiliar with the area and you are having difficulty seeing through the dust, would slowing down have been advisable?” Heiman asked.
“Possibly, yes,” Petitt responded.
Under questioning about specifics about the conditions of Road U and his actions, Petitt told Heiman that he had no memory of Road U.
“No memory of the stop sign?” Heiman asked.
“I have no memory of nothing,” Petitt said. “I don’t remember that intersection or the road. … The first thing I remembered is heading to the hospital.”
Earlier in the day, Emporia police officer Kenneth Rodriguez testified that he had found Petitt sitting on the truck bed with his head in his hands when Rodriguez arrived at the scene of the accident. Rodriguez at the time was a deputy with the Lyon County Sheriff’s Department.
Rodriguez then asked him what had happened.
“He told me that he made it out into the intersection and then he was struck,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said he gave Petitt an accident form to complete and went to work the accident.
Kansas Highway Patrol Troopers also testified today about their roles in reconstructing the accident and inspecting the concrete truck after it had been hauled to Williams Automotive.
Trooper Jeff Norling substantiated earlier testimony that the push rods for the truck’s front brakes were found to be out of adjustment. The measurements taken showed that one of the push rods measured two inches as it was engaged, and the other measured two and one-eighth inches. State and federal standards require the measurements to be no more than one and three-fourths inches before being considered as “out-of-service.”
Norling told Heiman that he could not determine whether those two brake violations had contributed to the accident.
“All I know is they were out of tolerance,” Norling said.
A KHP accident reconstruction expert, Jerry Daniels of Chanute, said that after extensive measuring and evidence-gathering, he could determine that the concrete truck was traveling a minimum of 33 or 34 miles per hour at the time of the collision.
He also testified that a “stop ahead” sign was posted along Road U about 784 feet before the stop sign at the intersection.
After the prosecution rested its case, defense attorney Riddle asked Chief Judge Merlin Wheeler to issue a judgment for acquittal.
“The state has absolutely and completely failed to prove in any way that there was a material deviation” in Petitt’s driving, Riddle said. “I hesitate at this point to say that the state has failed to prove my client even failed to stop at the stop sign.”
Riddle said that there had been no evidence that the defendant had drugs or alcohol in his system and that complaints about heavy dust in the area had been ignored.
“No one bothered to even check it out,” Riddle said.
He cited State v. Krovvidi as case law governing what is required to prove material deviation from actions a normal driver might take.
Wheeler denied the motion, saying that Riddle was correct in his argument as to what is required to prove the case, but explained that it was the wrong stage of proceedings to enter the motion.
The judge said he must assume that evidence presented by the state is true and consider it “in a light most favorable to the state.”
“I think purely because the stage we are at and the standard I must use, I am going to deny this motion,” Wheeler said.
Petitt took the stand as the defense’s sole witness.