A 20 year old man’s youthful indiscretion, fueled in part by alcohol, led to a poor decision that in seconds altered the lives of a lot of people.
At approximately 1210 am on a Sunday morning two men were bicycling home along a dark, curving road. About ½ mile ahead a patrol car, that had just passed them, passed a silver Acura. The driver of the Acura, the 20 year old male, made a decision that would have lasting and dire ramifications. The young man, Christopher Hoppe decided to put as much room between him and the patrol car as possible, accelerating his car from about 30 mph to somewhere between 65 and 70. As he was driving through one of those dark corners he saw no oncoming headlights and cut across the oncoming lanes to get away from the patrol car.
How the event occurred is open to speculation, some say he was looking in his rear view instead of where he was driving, looking for that patrol car. There was a report that the 19 year old passenger of his car, or the 20 year old driver of the car behind him, told the police that Hoppe thought it would be funny to buzz the guys on the bicycle. What is known is that while traveling at approximately 68 mph according to a forensic accident investigator the silver Acura struck the bicycle, tossing the men and the bike. Both men were killed instantly from severe head trauma. The Acura left enough parts that even before they finished the fatality investigation they knew the type and color of car they were looking for. Witnesses who stopped to help gave the second car’s description and a partial license plate.
Approximately one hour later Christopher’s mom called the police to report her son had struck a deer a bit earlier that night and wanted a police report to give to their insurance carrier. Three hours after that, when the crime scene investigation was complete, the police came to the house, matched the bagged and labeled parts to the car in the driveway, and knocked on the door until the family answered. He police noted the odor of alcohol on Christopher, now known as the suspect, but due to the length of time between the event and the interview declined to pursue a sobriety test. The police told him of the deaths and that they were conducting an investigation and read him his Miranda rights.
Christopher maintained that he struck a deer but told the police the name of his passenger and the driver of the car that was following him. Sometime Sunday morning the police interviewed the other driver and Christopher’s passenger. Christopher’s mother, a local teacher, was known to the detective investigating the case, so as a courtesy to her he went to the house Sunday afternoon and asked them to bring Christopher to headquarters after dinner for formal questioning, indicating that her son would be arrested and spending the night in the county jail. On Tuesday he was charged in court, he pleaded not guilty, and his parents had to place a $100,000 property bond to secure his release pending a trial.
In the meantime I was fielding calls from friends and acquaintances who, like I, knew the men that were killed. They were Ivan and Carmelo, uncle and nephew and 24 and 23 years old respectively, on the way back to their apartment from work. They are part of one of the invisible classes of people in our society, gainfully employed illegal aliens. They do the work in the restaurants the customers don’t think about… they are the cooks, busboys, dishwashers, prep workers. They work in major chain establishments, so they are not under the table, they have federal and state withholding taken out of their checks, and of course social security, plus the employers pay their share of the taxes. Plus they pay sales taxes on the items they purchase, such as the bicycle. All the same, despite prepping and cooking people’s food, despite cleaning up after them, despite paying taxes, these men, and others like them were invisible. But that is another blog for another time, back to Christopher.
I have been to the scene of a number of fatalities, including those where alcohol is involved. I once tended to a drunk patient who was driving a car that went off the road while others were cutting the body of his best friend out of the car. Almost two years later he was sentenced to 2 years in prison for vehicular homicide of his buddy. They were so close the decedent’s family pleaded with the judge for leniency, saying it would be like losing a second son. There have been several similar outcomes 2 to 5 years sentences for vehicular homicide, alcohol almost always was a factor.
On Tuesday, a week after Christopher was arraigned, the bodies were flown by AeroMexico for another wake by their families and finally their interment. Christopher is facing 2 charges of vehicular manslaughter and one charge of leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in a fatality. Instead of the two to five years drunk drivers have received the aggravating factor of leaving the scene increases the penalty dramatically; he is looking at 30 years in prison.
Maybe his first bad decision that night was to drive when he wasn’t sober… while there is no proof he was drunk just had been drinking, the fact that he sped away in the opposite direction of the police leads one to believe he may have been. There is no parent that would not gladly pick up their child at a party, regardless of their age, rather than risk them driving while intoxicated. But perhaps he wasn’t that impaired at all, perhaps he just decided that if the police smelled the alcohol on his breath he’d be in trouble (at 20 he was underage to be legally drinking which results in a mandatory one year loss of license in NJ). Perhaps he chose to speed up because there just simply are not that many cops in town, and if he is safely in your rear view mirror he won’t be ahead of you in a radar trap. Or maybe he did decide to buzz the two guys on their bike going home that evening.
Either way it is unlikely he made the conscious decision to kill two men, nor is it likely he considered that he would spend 30 years in prison as a consequence of his actions. But one fleeting lapse in judgment ended two lives, ruined his life, and has changed the lives of three families permanently.
Added: Christopher was tested an found not to have been drinking prior to the accident, and he tested positive for only a trace amount of THC, as if perhaps attained through incidental contact (second hand smoke). Which in a way makes it sadder that he faces more time in jail for a bad decision then people who knowingly get behind the wheel of an auto intoxicated.
Added: Christopher plead to 12 years in jail, six for each of the two men killed that night. He will be eligible for release after 10 years. Meaning when he gets out of jail he would have spent 1/3 of his life behind bars for a fleeting indiscretion.
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