Officer On Trial In Fatal Crash

2 Men Were Killed In Beltway Pileup

Moments before he crashed into a sport-utility vehicle and triggered a fatal eight-vehicle pileup, Prince George's County police officer Scott Campbell switched off the camera in his cruiser and turned off his overhead flashing lights, racing off at 124 mph in pursuit of a motorcycle, prosecutors said yesterday.

On the first day of Campbell's trial on manslaughter charges, prosecutors said the officer's actions during the May 2007 incident demonstrated "a consciousness of guilt" and amounted to "an attempt to destroy evidence." The crash on the Capital Beltway killed two people and injured 15 others.

"There would be no obstacle in his way to stop him in catching that motorcyclist," Assistant State's Attorney Joseph Ruddy III told jurors in his opening statement in St. Mary's County Circuit Court. "He had tunnel vision."

The trial was moved from Prince George's to St. Mary's at the request of the defense because of pretrial publicity.

Campbell's attorney, Michael Belsky, told jurors that the motorcyclist, not his client, was to blame for the crash. He said Campbell, 47, was trying to get the license plate number of the motorcycle but was thwarted by the operator's use of an illegal device that flips a license plate on its side, obscuring the view.

Belsky identified the operator as Harold Vaughn and said Vaughn was being pursued for speeding and other traffic violations. "A bad man, a good cop and a horrible accident," Belsky told jurors. "Not a case of criminal manslaughter, at all."

Belsky did not deny the prosecution's contention that Campbell turned off the cruiser's lights and camera, an assertion made when the jury was not in the room. He suggested that turning off the camera would not amount to an attempt to destroy evidence.

Among the prosecution's first witnesses were the widows of Kevin McCarter, 49, of Fort Washington and Sidney Clanton, 50, of Buffalo. Each tearfully described how police told her that her husband had been killed.

Another witness, Paul E. Loynes of Buffalo, who was with the two men in the SUV en route to a jazz festival, testified about Campbell's cruiser slamming into the back of the vehicle. McCarter was driving, Loynes said, and Clanton was in the front passenger seat.

"The car was flipping around in the air," Loynes, 56, told jurors, wiping tears from his eyes as he recalled that he briefly lost consciousness. "When I did come to, the car was upside down, and I was hanging halfway out the back window."

He said that as rescue workers cut him out of the SUV, he thought his friends might be alive. Loynes testified that before the crash, he and his friends saw a motorcyclist "weaving in and out of traffic."

"I said something to the effect of, 'Look at that guy. He must be going over a hundred miles an hour,' " Loynes said.