Woods had 2 drugs in system
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A grand jury has allowed the prosecution to proceed in the case of a driver who district attorneys say killed a teenage bicyclist in 2007 while texting, speeding and under the influence of Xanax and Vicodin, a grand jury report shows.
Following examination by the grand jury, which determines whether there is enough evidence for a trial, about 100 friends and family of Danny Oates were in the courtroom Friday when Jeffrey Woods, 21, pleaded not guilty to charges of vehicular manslaughter in the August 2007 death of the 14-year-old boy.
The Santa Ana court made a shortened four-year sentencing offer, Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Price said, that will be sent to the trial judge.
Woods’ attorney, Scott Well, has spent months “shopping” different judges for a shortened sentence, Price said.
Price sought a grand jury indictment, issued Nov. 10, to bring the case forward after being dismayed by the toll the delays have taken on Oates’ family, she said.
Well has said he plans to file a motion that will dismiss the grand jury indictment.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Danny’s father, Paul Oates. “It’s been 15 months and nine days now since Danny was killed. He was just a good kid. Danny was a leader for all those kids who showed up in the courtroom today. He was a good dude.”
The group of mourners has been present at every public hearing to date; some of the youngest attendees went to elementary school after they left the standing-room-only courtroom.
Now that the private grand jury hearing is finished, taking the place of a preliminary hearing, the case will move forward to trial in February.
At that time, the judge will have the option of approving the settlement offer or going ahead with a trial, Well said.
On Aug. 29, Woods’ pickup truck veered across Indianapolis Avenue at Everglades Lane and instantly killed Oates, who was on his bike, according to authorities.
“Obviously the district attorney’s opinion and my opinion are very different in this case,” Well said. “There’s a strong difference of opinion, factually, on what happened.”
An affidavit filed by Huntington Beach police said Woods was text messaging with regard to a drug deal, and was following cars too closely.
Near the time of the crash, Woods texted his ex-girlfriend, asking if she needed “bars,” slang for Xanax, Price said.
“The reason the texting was relevant is because it shows he was texting within a minute of the crash,” Price said. “It wasn’t beneficial for him to be text messaging while he was under the influence of drugs, because that causes an additional impairment.”
Well will try to prove that Woods’ text messaging was not the cause of the accident.
He compared Woods’ activity to applying makeup or talking to a friend in the car.
“[The prosecutors] will have to prove the texting happened at the exact time of the collision,” he said.
Woods had Vicodin and Xanax in his system at the time of the crash, the district attorney’s office said.
Actor Heath Ledger took a similar “cocktail” of drugs that killed him earlier this year, toxicology reports showed.
Ledger used Vicodin, Xanax and other drugs like Valium and Unisom.
The combination of Xanax-type drugs and Vicodin-type drugs can produce adverse reactions like psychomotor impairment, pharmacological texts show.
Well said his client had been administered morphine after the accident at the hospital, a fact which is undisputed by the prosecution, and that Woods had taken Vicodin to treat a migraine earlier in the day.
Friends of Woods testified about his illegal use of Xanax to the grand jury, Price said.
Well added that he will try to prove Woods was suffering a seizure at the time of the accident, and has two witnesses who will testify to the claim.
“I believe that’s why [the district attorney] didn’t allow the pretrial to go forward,” Well said.
“My client has absolutely no criminal history whatsoever.”
Well said the fact that there were no skid marks on the road would indicate that Woods was suffering from a seizure — not that he was intentionally speeding.
Witnesses painted a different picture for the grand jury.
“One witness said that he had in the past driven with him,” Price said. “I think he described him as a ‘wild driver.’”
She noted that no witnesses present at the collision noticed Woods exhibited any erratic bodily movements.
“It’s our position that he was impaired as a result of his text messaging and his drug use, so he didn’t even see the bicyclist,” Price said.
Well said Woods’ legs were snapped in the crash to the point that the bone punctured the skin; Woods appeared in court using crutches.
But Paul Oates questioned Woods’ character, regardless of his criminal record.
“We know people who have known him since high school, and he’s been a partyer ever since then,” he said. “What I can’t understand is, if there were no drugs, and no alcohol, and he wasn’t texting, how did he go across two lanes of traffic at 60 mph and hit my son with no brakes?”
“This is a terrible, terrible tragedy for all involved,” Well said. “No one feels worse about it than my client and his family, but we believe it was an accident, and that he shouldn’t be sent to prison for it.”
Woods was charged with felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence while intoxicated and driving under the influence and causing bodily injury.
He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years if convicted, but if the judge accepts the offer, Woods may go to prison for as little as four years.
“I don’t want a settlement,” Paul Oates said. “I want this to go to trial. But it’s not up to me.”
The next hearing will begin at 8:30 a.m. Feb. 13 in courtroom C-41 of the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana.
CANDICE BAKER can be reached at (714) 966-4631 or at [email protected].
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