Trent Graham (photo from his Facebook profile)
The man who swerved across several lanes of traffic on a wide, busy Everett street before striking and killing Trent Graham October 17 did not fall asleep.
There was no medical emergency that caused the 56-year-old man to drift across at least four lanes before striking Graham in the far curb lane on the seven-lane Evergreen Way as Graham biked home from his job at Gregg’s Cycles in Alderwood.
Instead, the man behind the pickup’s steering wheel may have been texting.
No charges have been filed yet, and police expect the investigation to take several more weeks, the Everett Herald reports:
A firefighter had used the phone to contact the man’s family from the ambulance, the warrant says. The firefighter at the time told police he saw text messages from the time of the crash.
Witnesses at the scene also told police they saw the man looking down at his lap and back up before the crash, the warrant says.
The police have since obtained a judge’s permission to search the phone and retrieve usage data. The results of that search weren’t detailed in documents filed in court Tuesday.
The driver reportedly told detectives that he lost control of his truck after another vehicle cut him off.
Surveillance video from the area doesn’t support the claim, police wrote.
It’s great that the police are taking this seriously. I had to stop reading streetsblog because it seemed like every day there was somebody killed on the street that the NYPD just shrugged off. I couldn’t take it anymore.
And whether he was texting or not he should be charged with a real crime.
Yes. Texting or not texting, drunk or sober, Trent is just as dead.