Post by WaTcHeR on Mar 22, 2006 13:14:41 GMT -5
Officer David Guzman
03/22/2006 - A Los Angeles police officer conceded Tuesday that he hit and critically injured a man riding a personal watercraft on Lake San Antonio and left the scene last year, but said he was unaware of the accident at the time and was sober.
It wasn't until immediately after the accident -- and what he thought was a routine beer run to the marina store -- that he started drinking, David Guzman testified.
In the next two hours, before his arrest on felony drunken boating and hit-and-run boating charges, he drank eight to 10 beers, he said from the stand.
Guzman is on trial in a Marina courtroom on those charges as well as misdemeanor drunken boating charges. If convicted of all charges, he faces a maximum of seven years in prison and would be prohibited from serving as a police officer.
The Ventura County resident told jurors Tuesday he was guilty of operating his boat under the influence two hours after the accident that injured Jason Penalba, but was sober when he unknowingly hit him.
Guzman said he, his wife, their 1-year-old son and another couple spent the afternoon at a beach on the lake. Because he was caring for his son, Guzman said, he drank less than two beers all day. About 5 p.m., he said, he and his friend, William Jeffers, motored up the lake to the marina store to buy beer.
Guzman said the lake was choppy in the afternoon winds and that the bow of his $60,000 speedboat "slapped" loudly against the water as he made his way across the lake. But with the roar of the high-powered boat and the stereo playing, he said, he didn't hear or feel a collision.
At one point, Guzman said, a bag that he had stowed on the boat flew up and he slowed the boat briefly to look for its contents, but didn't see anyone in the water. Witnesses testified that the boat slowed and two men peered toward Penalba, who had been knocked violently from the back of the personal watercraft and was bleeding profusely in the water.
Guzman said he passed the location on his way back to the beach, but did not notice two boats that had come to the aid of Penalba and his friend, Erik Shirey, who was driving the personal watercraft.
It wasn't until after 7 p.m., after Guzman dropped his family and friends at the marina, that he was approached by a Monterey County parks ranger in a boat and informed that there had been an accident.
About an hour later, after refusing to go through a field sobriety test, Guzman's breath test showed his blood alcohol level at 0.11 percent. A blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent is the level at which a person is presumed to be impaired under the law.
In testimony Monday, Marianne Perhach, a criminalist for the Department of Justice, testified it would take seven to nine drinks for a person of Guzman's size to reach a blood-alcohol level of 0.11 percent. On the other hand, she hypothesized, that person could have had 10 to 13 drinks and stopped drinking for three hours before being tested at 0.11. In that scenario, she said, the person would have had a 0.16 percent blood-alcohol level at 5 p.m.
Defense attorney Richard Rosen argued unsuccessfully that the felony drunken-driving charge should be thrown out because there was no direct evidence that Guzman was drinking before the accident. Judge Lydia Villarreal denied the motion based in part on the fact that there were 44 empty beer cans found on Guzman's boat when he was arrested.
On Monday, Guzman's wife, Erin, testified that some of those beer cans came from another couple who was using the beach. Most of the rest were consumed by her, Jeffers and his wife. She supported her husband's testimony saying he drank only one or two beers before 5 p.m., after which she took over care of the baby and Guzman drank 10 beers.
Prosecutor Rolando Mazariego attacked Erin Guzman's credibility, noting that she could not remember exactly how many beers she or the other couple drank, but remembered her husband's intake.
"Were you counting how many beers he had?" he asked.
"No," she answered.
"Then how do you get to 10?... That's one beer every 12 minutes and you weren't concerned at all?"
"All he had to do was drive us back to the shore. I wasn't really concerned," she said.
Mazariego challenged the defendant's credibility, pointing out that Guzman, who is trained as a police officer to pay attention to detail, did not notice the accident or the rescue helicopter that landed across the lake from him to whisk Penalba to UCLA Medical Center for treatment of a shattered pelvis and lacerated spleen and liver.
Also Monday, jurors traveled into the courthouse's parking lot to view Guzman's boat and the personal watercraft, whose passenger seat had been ripped off. In a driving rain, jurors peered closely at paint smudges and a large gash in the bow of the Ultra 247XS.
Guzman maintains the smudges came from the dock at Lake San Antonio, but concedes that paint analyses shows the gash came from the splintered personal watercraft.