Justice Finally Prevailed

Yes, justice finally prevailed in Solano County last week.

So, what happened?

On October 19, 2005, there was a terrible, terrible accident in Vacaville. A young man named David Bell ran his car up onto the sidewalk near an elementary school. Several people were injured and two children were killed.

The DA was trying David for 2nd degree murder and 10 counts of assault.

Now, David is a developmentally disabled man, who obviously does well enough to get a drivers license. A simple soul, he was devastated by what happened. He's been held in jail for over two years on these charges.

But what did happen?

According to the DA, David came upon slower moving traffic, flew into a rage, tried to pass the other cars on the right, ran up onto the sidewalk and injured 10, killed 2.

However, according to witnesses at the scene, David was completely out of it. He didn't know what had happened. The path of the car simply veered off, hit several parked cars and hit the children and parents leaving school. After being arrested, doctors diagnosed a seizure disorder. So David had a seizure. There was no malice, no anger, no deliberate running off the road, no intent to harm anyone.

Now, this is no surprise to me. My ex has a seizure disorder, and in fact, no longer has a drivers license because I turned him in after he had a seizure while driving (not his first, but since he was in deep denial and convinced his doctors that he was ok, the medication was keeping it under control, he was still driving). Yes, similarly, he had the seizure, was going faster and faster, ran a stop sign, nearly hit another car headon, sideswiped some small trees, until the car finally came to a halt. How do I know all this?

Our daughter was in the back seat. She unfastened her seat belt, leaned over the seat, couldn't pull his foot off the gas, so she pulled on the emergency brake and brought the car to a stop. She probably saved both their lives. And when he came out of it, he was, of course, bewildered and had no idea what had happened.

(That's the way it is with seizures and why they're so hard to diagnose. If the patient has no clue and there's no witnesses to the seizure, how do we know that it happened?)

In any case, does this all sound all too much like David's scenario?

David's first trial ended in a hung jury and reports say that most of the jurors were for acquittal. The second trial ended last week. David was acquitted of all charges.

Justice was finally served for this young man.

Having said that, my heart still goes out to the families who were injured and most especially to the Cardenas family, who lost two young children. While David received justice, they still mourn their babies. No matter how the trial turned out, they still suffer. There are no winners in this case, only blind justice.

May God watch over them and their other children and comfort them in their sorrow. In Jesus' name, Amen, Amen, Amen...

Link:
http://thereporter.com//ci_8207955?IADID=Search-thereporter.com-thereporter.com