DETROIT — A Michigan prosecutor filed murder charges Thursday against the 50-year-old driver of a pickup truck that struck a group of bicyclists out for a casual ride, killing five of them and seriously injuring four others.
Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey Getting charged Charles Pickett Jr. of Battle Creek with five counts of second-degree murder and four counts of reckless driving in the crash Tuesday in Cooper Township north of Kalamazoo.
Pickett is hospitalized and in police custody. He will be arraigned as soon as his health permits, Getting said during a Thursday afternoon news conference.
Getting cited patient privacy laws and declined to discuss why Pickett was hospitalized or his condition.
Police are continuing to gather information on what led to the crash and the charges were the first step in the legal process, he said.
He said state police are analyzing evidence.
“There’s been some speculation about, first, that he was drunk, second that there was something else in his system, third, now nothing at all is in his system,” Getting said of Pickett. “I would encourage all of you to wait. Take a breath. All of this information will come out. This is a process that takes time.”
Getting added that he will wait on reports from state police crime lab “before I tell anyone what was or was not in his system at the time.”
Often, in suspected drunken driving cases, blood samples of the drivers are taken for testing to determine how much — if any — alcohol is in that person’s system.
The bicyclists ranged in age from 40 to 74. They were five miles into a weekly 30-mile ride when they were struck from behind near a park.
Police said they had received complaints about a pickup being driven erratically and were searching for it minutes before the crash on the two-lane road.
The driver fled on foot but was caught by police shortly afterward.
