Suit filed in motorcycle/car incident
From our weekly issue dated March 18, 2009
Illinois Valley resident Stan Strange has filed a civil lawsuit stemming from an August 2007 motor vehicle incident near O’Brien.
On Aug. 27 that year, Strange was riding his motorcycle southbound on Hwy. 199 with his friends and fellow motorcyclists, Glen Seybold and Louis Pombo.
Everything was fine, Strange said, until a 1984 yellow Mercedes driven by Eric Harris Hill, according to law enforcement records, encountered the bikers. At the time, Hill was a student at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. So were his passengers, Alexander Golden; and Hill’s then-girlfriend, Samatha Pettigrew.
Strange contends that Hill attempted to pass Pombo “and pushed him right to the side of the road” before passing Seybold on the right.
“He shoved him into oncoming traffic,” Strange claims. “(Then) he tried to run me off the road all the way to O’Brien.” He reported the same accusations to law enforcement.
Strange continued, stating that traffic subsequently stopped down the road, at which point he got off his motorcycle to confront Hill. While waving one of his fingers at Hill, Strange said, his hand was inside the Mercedes. That move led to disaster, Strange said to law enforcement.
“He rolled the window up, drove off and drug me down the road 15 to 20 feet,” Strange declares. “They used the car as a weapon.”
After that, the bikers went to the nearby McGrew’s Restaurant & Lounge to report the incident to law enforcement. Strange said that a restaurant patron cleaned and bandaged his arm, which was injured in the fracas, while the bikers drank water and awaited officer response.
“We waited over an hour,” Strange said. “They never showed up there.”
Meanwhile, Hill and the other students headed south, and they eventually were stopped by a California Highway Patrol sergeant. It was at that point, according to the account by Strange, that “the kids lied and fabricated a story.”
Strange, Pombo and Seybold had since gone to Strange’s house on Rockydale Road. They were relaxing and drinking a beer when an Oregon State Police trooper arrived to question them about the incident.
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Some two months later, Strange said that he received notice from the Josephine County District Attorney’s Office that he was being charged with fourth-degree assault and reckless endangerment. Pombo and Seybold were charged solely with reckless endangerment, but all three men were sufficiently outraged to make a big deal about the situation.
During the following months there were numerous protests in front of the Josephine County Courthouse in Grants Pass. The bikers and their friends carried signs calling for D.A. Stephen Campbell to resign.
In May 2008, the case came to trial before Judge Lindi Baker in Circuit Court. On May 8, a six-person jury found the bikers not guilty on all charges after 13 minutes of deliberation.
On Aug. 25, 2008, a civil suit was filed in Multnomah County court against Hill, Golden and Pettigrew. Strange, Pombo and Seybold are the plaintiffs, and are being represented by Dylan Lawrence from Sam Hochberg & Associates, a Portland-based law firm specializing in motorcycle injury cases.
Strange said that subpoenas have been submitted and that the discovery process is under way.
“I’m trying to recover my attorney’s fees and the loss of my time from 18 trips to court and three days of trial by jury,” Strange said.
Whether or not the case will go to trial remains to be seen. But Strange said that he simply wants to see justice served.
“We’re just waiting to see what the insurance companies are going to say,” he said. “It’s at the point now where the insurance company can either make us an offer or we go to court.”
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