A Vancouver man on trial for allegedly causing a sequence of crashes on Interstate 205 that led to the death of a good Samaritan should not be held criminally responsible for the man’s death, his defense attorney argued Thursday.
Jeff Barrar, who is representing Joshua C. Frahm in his vehicular homicide trial, said in closing arguments that his client’s actions may have played a role but that it was another driver’s negligence that caused the man’s death.
Frahm, 29, is accused in the Dec. 7, 2014, hit-and-run crash on I-205 and subsequent death of Richard G. Irvine of Camas. Irvine, 63, was mortally injured after he stopped to help the victim of the hit-and-run crash, and was struck when a minivan driven by Fredy Delacruz-Moreno hit the disabled vehicle he was assisting. Delacruz-Moreno is not facing charges in the death.
Instead, Frahm is charged in Irvine’s death, and also faces vehicular assault, hit-and-run, false reporting and conspiracy to commit first-degree perjury.
Jurors began their deliberations Thursday afternoon but had not reached a decision by the end of the day.
According to the prosecution, Frahm was driving a white Ford F-150 pickup north on the freeway near Burton Road just before 6 a.m. when he rear-ended a northbound Honda CRV driven by Steven M. Klase of Battle Ground. Frahm did not stop or report the collision.
The impact catapulted the CRV across all northbound lanes, where it crashed into the highway’s center concrete median and stopped in the left northbound lane.
Irvine, who also was driving north, saw the collision, stopped and parked his vehicle on the right shoulder. He ran to the CRV and called 911. While he was on the phone with dispatchers, a northbound Honda Odyssey minivan driven by Delacruz-Moreno struck the passenger side of the CRV and pushed it into Irvine.
He suffered serious injuries and later died at a Vancouver hospice facility. Klase suffered a broken leg and fractured spine.
In his closing arguments, Barrar told the jury that this case is overcharged. “At what point do you no longer hold (Frahm) responsible?” he asked.
When Delacruz-Moreno’s minivan struck the disabled CRV, he broke the chain of events originally brought on by Frahm’s driving, Barrar argued.
Irvine made the decision to cross the highway, he said, and put himself in harm’s way, and Delacruz-Moreno should have been paying better attention.
“For all we know, he could have been sleeping at the wheel,” Barrar said. “There’s no reason why he didn’t see what was in the road ahead, other than, he wasn’t paying attention.”
Barrar said that Delacruz-Moreno’s account of the crash changed when he testified because of his “conscious guilt” over his role in Irvine’s death.
He urged the jury not to find Frahm guilty of vehicular homicide.
“This doesn’t mean Mr. Irvine’s life was meaningless or that someone shouldn’t be held accountable,” Barrar said. “But sometimes, you just can’t.”
‘Banquet of consequences’
Senior Deputy Prosecutor Kasey Vu argued that Frahm’s driving was a proximate cause of Irvine’s death and that it doesn’t need to be the sole cause in order for him to be convicted of vehicular homicide.
“In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Everyone sooner or later sits down to a banquet of consequences,’ ” he said.
Frahm had been out drinking all night, Vu said, and multiple witnesses reported seeing a white Ford F-150 pickup speeding and driving erratically on state Highway 14 and I-205 just before the hit-and-run crash.
“Surely he didn’t go (to the bar) to play bingo, Scrabble,” Vu said. “He was stinking drunk. He should have not been driving. And that is the root cause of this case.”
Investigators mapped out Frahm’s whereabouts before and during the crash based on his cellphone activity. That map matched the timeline established by witnesses and surveillance video of Frahm leaving a downtown Vancouver apartment about 20 minutes before the crash. That footage also captured Frahm going inside the friend’s apartment with a bottle of alcohol.
Additional video surveillance and traffic cameras captured Frahm driving away from the downtown area to get onto Highway 14. At one point, his pickup drove up onto the sidewalk, Vu said.
At 5:47 a.m., the first 911 caller reported a white Ford F-150 pickup driving erratically. A second 911 call came in a minute later on Highway 14. Irvine made the final 911 call at 5:54 a.m., moments before he was struck by the disabled vehicle he was assisting.
“It’s obviously clear (Frahm’s) truck was involved in the initial crash,” Vu said. Video evidence and DNA found on the pickup’s airbag, he said, prove Frahm was the driver.
“The lives that were impacted happened as a result of the defendant’s conduct,” Vu said. “Today he is sitting down to his banquet of consequences.”
The jury will continue deliberating today.
