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Suspect in Marine recruits' deaths seeks to toss out evidence
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Donald P. Williams
Crash killed 3 Marine recruits
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
It was evident that something was wrong with Donald P. Williams Jr. as he lay in a hospital bed after being involved in a traffic accident just west of here that killed three Marine Corp recruits.
“He had slow, slurred speech and squinty eyelids. It was hard to see his eyes,” Trooper Chris DelGenio of the Ohio State Highway Patrol testified Friday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court of Williams.
“He was continually falling asleep or nodding off.”
The testimony was part of a hearing in Williams’ criminal case to determine whether statements Williams made to DelGenio at St. Joseph Health Center March 31, 2010, and blood taken there that day can be used as evidence.
The hearing will resume at 1:30 p.m. May 12 with Judge Andrew Logan presiding.
Williams, 45, of Austintown, faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of six counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, six counts of aggravated vehicular assault and one count of drug possession. He is free on bond.
The charges stem from an accident on state Route 5 at the Burnett Street intersection in which Williams’ semi tractor hit the back of a vehicle stopped at the traffic light. The vehicle contained the recruits who were on their way to Cleveland to complete their enlistment.
DelGenio testified that he suspected Williams might have been under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs at the time of the crash because Williams drove for a local trucking company, so he probably knew the area, and there was no indication that Williams applied his brakes to avoid the accident.
DelGenio had to awaken Williams to ask him whether he would voluntarily give a blood sample and to ask him questions, DelGenio said.
Williams asked whether he was required to provide a blood sample, and DelGenio told him no, but that DelGenio would seek a court order for it if Williams refused.
Eventually Williams agreed to the blood sample and answered several questions, though he refused to write down his answers or sign the notes DelGenio took regarding the interview.
In the interview, Williams said he thinks he “might have blacked out” before the accident and that all he could remember was hitting a motorcycle.
Police say Williams’ truck hit the back of the recruits’ vehicle and a pickup truck, both stopped at the traffic light, which caused a chain-reaction that involved several other vehicles.
Police say the motorcycle was the last of several vehicles Williams’ truck struck.
In questioning from Williams’ attorney, J. Gerald Ingram, DelGenio admitted he failed to mention that Williams was groggy in his police report.
DelGenio said he smelled no alcohol or any indication of drug use during the two times he was close enough to talk to Williams just after the accident and at the hospital.
Prosecutors say Valium and a similar drug, Nordiazepam, were in the blood that was drawn from Williams that day.
In a court filing, Ingram said the evidence will establish that Williams lacked “sufficient faculties to comprehend” the reading of his rights by Trooper DelGenio.
Williams was “in a state of physical and mental distress, which clouded his thought processes” and made him “vulnerable to coercion and manipulation” by DelGenio, Ingram wrote.
Because of this, Williams was not in a position to give a “knowing and voluntary waiver” of his rights to remain silent during the interview, Ingram contended.