2010070800

Witness: State Trooper Was Not Chasing Anyone Before Fatal Wreck

Special To The Raleigh Telegram

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

JAMESTOWN, NC - An eyewitness and first responder to a May 23 fatal accident in Jamestown, North Carolina that left a grandmother and an 11 year old girl dead disputes reported claims that Trooper J.D. Goodnight was in hot pursuit at the time.

Witness Terry Johnson knows the smell of death. He knows the look, the feel, the taste, the specter all too well. As a combat Ranger in the U.S. Army Special Forces during the Vietnam War, he is better acquainted with death than he'd like to be. He has taken lives and he has saved lives; he has cradled comrades in his arms as they drew their final breath.

Forty-three years removed from the horrors of war, Johnson thought he had experienced the worst imaginable. He thought his days of seeing carnage and bloodshed up close and personal were long relegated to the dim past.

More fortunate than many of his combat brethren, the ravages of post-traumatic stress disorder had eluded him, and he had gone on to live a productive, successful life, normal in every measurable way.

But that aura of normalcy was shattered the morning of May 23, 2010. In the blink of an eye, a pleasant Sunday morning drive down Business I-85 turned into a nightmare rivaling anything he had seen in Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. It fell to Terry Johnson to hold the hand and stroke the forehead of another human being as she lay dying.

Yet, in the process, the 63-year-old combat vet has drawn a metaphorical target on his back that seems destined to put him in the crosshairs of public and media scrutiny as surely as if he were a sniper's prey.

Most central North Carolina residents are aware of the tragic events of that morning.

Sandra Allmond, a 55-year-old Thomasville grandmother, and Taylor Strange, an 11-year-old sixth-grader at Jamestown Elementary School, lost their lives when Allmond turned into the path of the Dodge Charger being driven by N.C. State Highway Patrol trooper J.D. Goodnight.

Two of Strange's classmates at Jamestown Elementary, Elijah Allmond and Steven Strange, were seriously injured but survived, while Goodnight was treated and released.

Allmond, taking the kids home after attending church at First Pentecostal Church in High Point, was making a left turn from the northbound lane of Business I-85 at the light at River Road.

Goodnight, a 10-year veteran of the patrol, according to all published reports, was involved in a high-speed chase pursuing a blue Buick Skylark that he had clocked doing 80 mph in the 55 mph zone.

His vehicle was said to have reached a top speed of 125 mph before slowing to 95 at the point of impact. The two vehicles collided in the intersection, severing Allmond's Honda Accord in two, with the front end landing, according to an accident reconstruction team, 137 feet away and Goodnight's vehicle coming to rest in the woods 225 feet after the crash.

But while the two vehicles wound up a couple of hundred feet apart, the two versions of events leading up to the fatal crash are miles and miles apart.

The official version has maintained from the outset that the trooper was in hot pursuit, initially chasing a Pontiac Grand Am but later changed to a Buick Skylark. Reports the following day added that the vehicle was occupied by four black males.

Eyewitness and first responder Terry Johnson tells a radically different story. In an exclusive interview with the Jamestown News July 6, Johnson claimed that there was no high-speed chase, no Buick Skylark, no four passengers.

“The only four passengers he saw were in that Honda,” said Johnson, “and two of them died.”

Johnson, who lives with his wife in an upscale neighborhood near Jamestown, related a detailed, explicit, moment-by-moment sequence of events leading up to the crash, which included two trips through the area in question with a reporter, that, at best, calls into question Trooper Goodnight's explanation and, at worst, completely contradicts it.

Johnson's version is as follows:

He pulled onto Business I-85 at the Vickrey Chapel Road interchange, heading south toward High Point at approximately 11:40 a.m. that Sunday. Just as the acceleration lane ends there is a paved crossover in the median, where he spotted a highway patrol vehicle. Shortly thereafter there is a sign warning that an intersection is one-half mile ahead. The patrolman had pulled in behind him by the time he passed that sign, and both proceeded at 55 mph.

“I figured he was running my license tags,” said Johnson, “because he pulled right in behind me and stayed there.”

There is another sign a quarter mile from the intersection, this one with two flags and a flashing yellow light. There are also large white letters on the pavement saying the intersection is 1,000 feet away. This is where Johnson claimed that the patrolman pulled out from behind him into the left lane and immediately accelerated. Approximately four car-lengths in front of him, he turned on his blue lights.

“From the time he pulled out, he probably had three to four seconds before impact,” estimated Johnson. “He did try to slow down, but by then it was way too late. The Honda was already out in the middle of the intersection. She never knew what hit her.

“Ironically, the color scheme on my truck is gray over silver, the same as a state patrol car. She looked up and saw my truck doing 55 down the hill and figured she had plenty of time to make the turn. And in that split-second he pulled out.”

Obviously, this version does not comport with a high-speed chase of another car.

“The one thing that's been consistent with every report is that Goodnight was on a high-speed chase,” said Johnson. “I'm telling you that is absolutely impossible. I had a clear line of vision both ways and there was no speeding vehicle going either way.

“The left lane was clear and there was no one behind me except Goodnight after he pulled out. If he was on a chase, all he had to do was pull out in the left lane and get it. So why would he take the time to follow me at 55 for almost a quarter mile?”

Johnson arrived at the scene almost simultaneously with two other witnesses, Donald Ross and Michael Perry, who were traveling northbound behind Allmond and witnessed the crash from that vantage point.

“We were right behind the car as it turned at the light,” said Ross on July 10th. “We saw every bit of it.”

But while he witnessed the impact, Ross could not recall the moments leading up to it and could not confirm or deny whether the patrol vehicle was already in hot pursuit or pulled out from behind Johnson mere moments before.

His recollections of the moments after the crash did confirm Johnson's statements.

“I cut the seat belt loose from around the little girl,” Ross said.

“I was running around triaging everyone before the EMTs got there,” said Johnson, “and I remember asking one of the other two guys who stopped if they had a knife to cut that seat belt.”

Perry could not be reached for comment. Ross and Johnson both said they filled out an eyewitness report and, presumably, so did Perry.

“I was interviewed by three state troopers at the scene prior to me starting my witness statement,” said Johnson. “They were primarily interested in whether he had his blue lights on and whether he had the green or red light (at the intersection). And, of course, I told them it was green and that he hit his blue lights about four car-lengths in front of me after he pulled out.”

Both were also interviewed by a member of the accident reconstruction team. Ross did not recall who conducted the interview with him, but Johnson did.

“Sgt. (Mark) Davidson is the guy who interviewed me,” said Johnson, “He and his partner came to my house the following day, Monday, and interviewed me on tape for about an hour and a half. He asked me specifically did I ever get the sense that Officer Goodnight had any urgency to do anything, and I said no. He pulled in behind me and we trundled down the road for a quarter mile at 55, and then he kicked his car in the butt and took off and killed two people. That's the bottom line.”

“That interview is out there. I told them everything I'm telling you. Both my written statement and a taped interview will totally refute the information their office is putting out there.”

While Sgt. Davidson is not allowed by policy to comment on an ongoing investigation, the patrol's public information officer, Sgt. Jeff Gordon, did shed some light on the situation.

“I spoke with Sgt. Davidson and he said he interviewed three people traveling in the southbound lane, one of them being Trooper Goodnight, and one in the northbound,” he said Monday, July 12. “All were recorded and will be summarized as part of the final report.”

He said that Mr. Johnson's version of events as you described them to me, were essentially what he told him. The discrepancy comes in where he fell in behind him and gunned it.

“Obviously I can't comment on the report, but what I can tell you is that sometimes what people perceive as correct may be interpreted differently by someone else,” said Sgt. Jeff Gordon. “I don't know if this is the case as far as Mr. Johnson's recollection. I don't think it's fiction, he just may have a different perception in his eye as to what transpired leading up to the accident. But I wasn't there so it's hard for me to say.”

A source within the Highway Patrol who spoke only on condition of anonymity said that the final report would be completed “soon,” but would not elaborate on exactly how soon.

But why did Johnson wait six weeks before going public with his story?

“I waited awhile because there are two investigations going on (one by the accident reconstruction team that shut down Business I-85 for four hours May 26 to take measurements and record other pertinent data for a 3-D movie, and another by the N.C. Attorney General's Office),” he said. “I was obviously involved in the first one but find it remarkable that in the second one no one has bothered to call an eyewitness and the first guy on the scene. I've cooperated every way possible but it appears they don't want my help.”

There appears to be an explanation why he has not been contacted by the Attorney General's office. According to Noelle Talley, Public Information Officer for the N.C. Attorney General's Office, their involvement is limited to liability issues.

“Our office represents state government agencies whenever they get sued,” she said, “and in anticipation of a lawsuit being filed against the Highway Patrol related to this accident, our office along with the state's insurance carrier, which is Traveler's Insurance, hired an outside engineering firm to review the accident. So that's what's been going on; there's not any kind of investigation by investigators within our office”

“I think the Highway Patrol was also doing their own thing (during the accident reconstruction), but from what I know of who was hired by the state's insurance carrier, ours was an engineering firm,” she added.

Still, Johnson said he felt the time was right to come forward.

“I can't carry this around anymore,” he said. “I feel like it's my duty to two families who are still grieving and are not getting any answers. They're willing to put out erroneous information to protect one of their own, which is what it looks like to me. They've had this long to straighten it out and haven't done it, and it's not right. It stinks.”

There were three children in the vehicle who were students at Jamestown Elementary School and although two of the children survived, it hit the school very hard.

“We've had a whole team of probably 10 or 12 grief counselors here all morning,” said Jamestown Elementary principal Kimberly Fleming in an interview with The Jamestown News at the time of the accident. “We made contact this (Monday) morning and they swooped in immediately. They're on standby for both teachers and students.”

A motorist who arrived at the scene approximately five minutes after the accident said it appeared the trooper had crossed the median north of the intersection and was in full pursuit, headed toward High Point, by the time of the fatal collision.

“EMS had him on a stretcher when I got there,” said the motorist, a former journalist. “His car was at the edge of the field on the River Road side, and parts of the Honda were strewn all the way into the northbound lane. It's the worst accident I've ever seen.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: This article was written by Ogi Overman of The Jamestown News in Jamestown, North Carolina and was reprinted with the publisher’s permission.

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