Cop in deadly hit-and-run: I was too stunned to stop
BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter rhussain@suntimes.com January 13, 2012 4:46PM
Richard Bolling as he walks through the lobby of the Criminal Courts Building at 26 & California. Tuesday, January 10, 2012. | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times
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Updated: February 15, 2012 8:08AM
The Chicago Police veteran grew quiet and hung his head low.
A few seconds later, Richard Bolling pulled his face back up and slowly wiped his eyes with a white tissue.
“I lost it,” Bolling testified Friday, describing how he felt when he learned the boy he rammed into with his Dodge Charger had died.
Bolling, who admitted he had been drinking when he got behind the wheel in the early morning hours of May 22, 2009, said he only sped off from the scene of the wreck because he was traumatized. The married father of two also said after he “popped out of it,” he was planning to go back to the site of the off-duty accident, at 81st and Ashland, when a pair of patrol officers stopped him going the wrong way on a one-way street a few blocks away.
“I was so angry at myself,” Bolling, 42, said while testifying in his own defense in the hit-and-run crash that claimed the life of 13-year-old Trenton Booker.
“I was thinking, ‘I gotta get back over there.’ ”
Bolling said he spent the prior evening playing basketball with his son and others at Washington Park. He later went back home, split a pizza with his son and watched an NBA game before heading to the Odyssey Lounge — a Thursday evening ritual for him and his older basketball buddies.
There, Bolling said he sipped two drinks— a beer and vodka with orange juice — while playing a blackjack video game and joking around with patrons. As he left, the bartender slipped him another beer, which he took a sip from and carried back to his car.
The open bottle of beer was later discovered inside the Charger along with White Castle hamburgers, chicken rings and French fries Bolling had been nibbling on seconds before he saw a figure on a bicycle pedaling northbound on the southbound lanes of Ashland.
Bolling said he told himself, “That person’s coming my way” and swerved in order to avoid a collision. But Trenton suddenly darted out right in front of him, he said.
“I heard a hit and then I was kind of stunned. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I was shocked,” Bolling said.
“It was kind of a disconnect in my mind. I saw what happened but didn’t believe it.”
Bolling told Cook County prosecutor Ashley Romito he was cruising at 40 to 45 miles per hour when he slammed into Trenton. But he was adamant that he wasn’t drunk or had seen the boy’s body hit his windshield and fly into the air.
Bolling said he willingly took four field sobriety tests. “I wanted to take them,” the 17-year Chicago Police veteran conceded.
But Bolling said since he passed the exercises, he was taken aback when he was later asked to take a Breathalyzer.
During this week’s trial, officers Brenda Gomez-Sanchez and Milton Kinnison testified they erroneously determined Bolling was not intoxicated at the time of his arrest and that he satisfactorily completed all the field sobriety tests. Gomez-Sanchez even said that her watch commander ordered her to “hold off” on the tests until two hours following the incident.
Bolling’s Breathalyzer, administered 4½ hours after the crash, registered his blood alcohol level at .079 — just a bit shy of the .08 legal intoxication level, according to court testimony.
However State Police forensic toxicologist Jennifer Bash testified Friday that if Bolling had been tested right after the accident, tests would show that he was legally drunk.
Bolling is facing reckless homicide, aggravated DUI and leaving the scene of an accident charges.
His jury trial before Judge Matthew Coghlan is expected to close Tuesday.
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