A 28-year-old North Little Rock man who inflicted brain-damaging and paralyzing injuries on a motorcyclist in a September drunken-driving hit-and-run collision was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Monday.
Nathan Michael Ray pleaded guilty to felony charges of first-degree battery and leaving the scene of an injury accident along with misdemeanor counts of second-offense driving while intoxicated and driving on a suspended license, as more than 100 of 29-year-old Trevor Joel Ware’s friends and family looked on.
Ray pleaded guilty in exchange for prosecutors recommending the 25-yearprison term imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims. Deputy prosecutor Luke Daniel told the judge Ray was drunk when he rear-ended Ware’s motorcycle in a late-night collision on Interstate 40 East in North Little Rock, knocking the victim into the road.
The motorcycle was wedged underneath Ray’s borrowed 2004 Mercedes Benz, but Ray kept driving, Daniel said. Ray took the JFK Boulevard exit, which was about 340 feet from where he hit Ware, but didn’t stop until he reached intersection of Pine and A streets. There, he dislodged the bike before driving home, according to Daniel. An arrest report said strands of Ware’s hair were found on the Mercedes’ windshield, and police seized a bloody shirt from Ray’s home.
The collision came just before the seventh anniversary of Ray’s 2005 conviction in Indiana for a fatal drunken-driving crash in that state, according to Indiana prison records. The records also show he was convicted of another felony drunken-driving offense in Indiana in 2011. Both times, he was sentenced to prison.
Ray, through his attorneys Jack Lassiter and Virgil Young Jr., declined an opportunity to address the court. Ware was recuperating from his fourth surgery related to the collision and was too ill to attend the hearing. His mother, Pamela Ware, bluntly assessed Ray’s actions before the court.
“You left him to die,” Ware said, saying that the crash had not only physically devastated her oldest son but also financially ruined him with more than $400,000 in medical bills. “He’s scared about the future.”
Ware’s best hope of recovery will require physical, occupational and speech therapies he can’t afford and Medicaid won’t pay for, she said.
Her son had been proudly independent before the crash, training himself how to be a mechanic, she said. He rebuilt and sold vintage motorcycles, selling them to finance his love of travel, she said. Ware was also a writer, artist and self-taught musician, she said. He played bass guitar in a local indie rock band, Grand Serenade, which was just starting to enjoy some success when he was injured, she said.
But his injuries, partial paralysis on his left side and a brain injury that required part of his skull to be replaced with titanium mesh, have put him in a wheelchair, damaged his memory and require him to need around-the-clock care for routine living activities, she said. Ware said she had to move back to Little Rock from Colorado to help take care of him.
“It’s all because of someone else’s selfish, reckless and criminal choices,” Pamela Ware said.
She and her son are also pursuing a civil suit against Ray and his parents, Michael and Talena Ray of Sherwood, court filings show. Michael Ray owned the Mercedes his son was driving when he struck Ware, according to arrest reports.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/21/2013