The first phone call to 911 after a developmentally disabled Little Rock man was run over by a van came from the phone of the suspected hit-and-run driver, a Pulaski County jury heard Wednesday.
Kevin Linsley Jr., 36, of Benton is charged with misdemeanor negligent homicide and felony failure to stop after an accident causing death. He is accused of killing Ian Canham, 29, by running over Canham while pulling out of a convenience-store parking lot.
Linsley's trial began Wednesday, three days after the first anniversary of the accident. Proceedings before Circuit Judge Chris Piazza are scheduled to resume at 10:15 a.m. today.
Linsley faces up to six years in prison, but his attorney, Clint Lancaster, questioned how that could be since police dash camera video shows the van Linsley had been driving parked nearby as paramedics worked in the street to save Canham's life.
Witnesses also testified seeing the van stop and pull over, and the driver get out after running over Canham.
Lancaster urged jurors not to rule against his client because a man had died. He said Linsley had done what he was supposed to do.
"Just because somebody died, it doesn't mean he's guilty of a crime," Lancaster said in his opening statement. "What else is he supposed to do? He stops, he calls 911, he's released by police. That doesn't sound like leaving the scene to me."
Lancaster showed jurors that Linsley, a technician for Lawn Doctor of West Little Rock, had been driving the van, which was marked with the company's distinctive green-thumb logo.
The attorney played jurors store surveillance video that showed Linsley driving around the back of the Shell store at Rodney Parham Road and Old Forge Drive after apparently making a purchase.
The recording does not show Canham getting run over because the van drives out of range just before striking him, police said.
Canham was hit Aug. 28, 2015, as he was walking on the sidewalk in front of the store.
Deputy prosecutor Jennifer Corbin told jurors that Linsley's van dragged Canham 67 feet before his body came loose and he was run over.
The crash left him mangled, broken and scalded by hot tires. He was covered in grease and dirt, his body covered with large scrapes and some of his skin flayed down to the bone. He died from a fractured skull, Corbin said.
Canham was returning home from a video-game store on Rodney Parham where his mother, Catherine Canham, said he'd spent $10 to buy his younger brother a video game.
A seizure disorder kept Canham from holding a job or driving a car, so he'd "saved nickels and dimes" to buy the game, the prosecutor said.
No one taking responsibility for the accident stepped forward while authorities were on the scene, according to police testimony, and the officers said they would never let anyone who admitted being involved to leave.
Investigator Stan Harmon testified that witness descriptions of the van led him to Lawn Doctor, where he got Linsley's phone number.
Linsley told him that he never saw anyone, only stopping after seeing an arm on the road behind the van in his right rearview mirror, Harmon told jurors.
Questioned by the defense, Harmon said Linsley's phone number matched the number that made the first 911 call after the accident.
But there was no testimony about whether that caller spoke with the emergency dispatchers.
Officer Ralph Brashears, a police vehicular-homicide investigator, testified he'd measured the distance from impact to where Canham came to rest and that length was just about twice the width of the courtroom.
"That's a long ways," he said.
The distance included a 41-foot skid mark that showed the van was accelerating when it hit Canham, he told jurors, explaining that he could tell the vehicle was picking up speed by the color and size of the skid. He said he could not tell how fast it was going, although the mark was caused by a spinning tire trying to grip the asphalt.
The impact knocked Canham out of his sandals, and his clothes were ripped off by being dragged down the street -- a common occurrence when pedestrians are dragged by vehicles, he told jurors.
Prosecutors showed photographs Brashears had taken of the man's shredded shirt, his glasses and a broken bracelet strung out like a trail behind him.
"When you get hit by a vehicle, it takes everything away from you," Brashears told jurors.
The only eyewitness to the crash testified that he saw Canham, just before the man was run over, tap on the van to alert the driver to his presence.
Gerald Foret said he was a passenger in a car passing in front of the store just as Canham was hit. The driver was looking away from the man, Foret said.
"He [Canham] tapped ... the front of the van to let the guy know he was there," Foret told jurors. "He [the driver] could not have seen him or he would have stopped. If he would have looked, he would have seen him."
The van "pushed" Canham 30 to 40 feet before Canham went under the vehicle, Foret said, describing the vehicle "bouncing" as it ran over Canham before stopping.
Witness Catherine Gibbons told jurors the van in oncoming traffic caught her eye because she could see something "rolling" under it. Then she saw the body "pop" out from underneath the vehicle, she said.
Later, when she realized she'd seen the man's bloody arm coming out from under the van, that memory haunted her for weeks, she told jurors.
Patrick Henry, a Conway pastor who came upon the scene, told jurors he first thought he was seeing discarded luggage in the road. It was "obvious" that Canham had been dragged and run over, he said.
"There were black marks all over his body," he said. "There was a lot of blood."
Allen Thompson, who worked at the nearby Heritage College, was one of the first to reach the victim, describing how he'd used his lifeguard and National Guard training to try to help.
The man's face was "smashed in" and he was choking on his own blood, Thompson said.
Leaving the scene, Thompson said he walked by the Lawn Doctor van parked on an embankment above where Canham had been lying in the street. He said he didn't realize the van had been involved until Gibbons, a co-worker, had told him about it.
Metro on 09/01/2016