Michael Smith said he was riding bikes with his friend, Trenton Booker, late at night almost three years ago when he saw the black muscle car barreling toward them on Ashland Avenue.
"I saw it coming real fast," Smith, now 18, testified Tuesday in a Cook County courtroom. "First it turned toward my way, then it turned toward Trenton's way, and it hit him."
The fatal impact sent Trenton, 13, flying across 81st Street; his body came to rest under a parked vehicle. Witnesses said the driver, off-duty Chicago police Officer Richard Bolling, never hit his brakes.
Testimony began Tuesday in the trial of Bolling on charges of aggravated DUI, reckless homicide and leaving the scene of a fatal accident in the May 2009 crash.
In opening statements, prosecutors said that minutes after striking the boy, Bolling was pulled over driving the wrong way down 82nd Street. The car had front-end damage and blood splattered on the cracked windshield. Inside, police found an open bottle of beer and a spilled bag of White Castle hamburgers, according to prosecutors.
Before the two patrol officers even approached his car, Bolling got out, raised his hands toward them and yelled, "I'm the police," Assistant State's Attorney Ashley Romito told jurors.
Even though the officers noted Bolling smelled of alcohol, he wasn't given a field-sobriety test until nearly two hours later. Officers at the scene said he passed the exam. Four and a half hours after the crash, and only under pressure from an internal affairs sergeant, Bolling submitted to a blood-alcohol breath test, registering 0.079 percent, just under the legal limit of 0.08 percent, Romito said.
Prosecutors are expected to call an expert witness who will estimate that Bolling's blood-alcohol content exceeded the legal limit at the time of the crash.
According to court filings by prosecutors, an undisclosed superior officer was captured on a squad car video recording at the crash scene telling Bolling he would "try to help you out as much as possible."
Bolling's attorney, Thomas Needham, denied Bolling got any special treatment and told jurors that after they view videotape of the off-duty officer performing the sobriety tests, they will be left with "substantial doubt, reasonable doubt" about the accuracy of the breath-testing machine.
"He was not the one making any decisions (about when to administer the tests)," Needham said in his opening statement. "He was doing what he was told. He was cooperating with an investigation. ... He asked for no special favors on the night he was arrested, and he asks for none here."
Needham told jurors he expected that Bolling, 42, would testify in his own defense. The veteran officer joined the force in 1992 and had been working in the narcotics unit. The son of a retired Chicago police commander, Bolling earned 20 honorable mentions and numerous department commendations.
Bolling acknowledged to police that he had been hanging out with friends and drinking at the Odyssey Lounge for about two hours before getting into his car to head home. Needham told jurors Bolling had consumed only two drinks, although court records show Bolling told the internal affairs sergeant he drank three beers and two shots of vodka.
Needham said Bolling had not stopped at the scene of the crash because he was "in a state of shock."
But Romito said Bolling was caught on the squad car video "talking to himself" about his damaged car and more concerned about when he would be able to eat his burgers.
"It wasn't until he learned that (Trenton) had died that he expresses any emotion whatsoever," Romito said.
Prosecutors also called several witnesses who testified they heard Bolling's car engine revving and saw it speeding nearly 70 mph in the 30 mph zone before striking Trenton.
Stephanie Greenlee said she had just left the nearby Visionz nightclub when she felt her car shake as the Charger passed her. Seconds later, she watched in horror as Bolling collided head-on with the boy and kept on driving, she said.
Earlier Tuesday, Trenton's mother, Barbara Norman, twisted a tissue in her hands and sobbed on the witness stand as she recalled getting a call from her daughter that there had been an accident. Her son had sneaked out of the house and was out late at night against her wishes, she said.
When she arrived at the crash scene, only Trenton's crumpled red bike remained. He had been taken to Holy Cross Hospital, but by the time she arrived there, he was dead.
Copyright 2012 - Chicago Tribune
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
