Driver Won't Face Reckless Homicide Charge In Biking Deaths

NEWPORT, Ind. -- Vermillion County's prosecutor said Wednesday she will not file reckless homicide charges against a truck driver involved in a collision that killed two police officers on a charity bicycle ride.

Prosecutor Nina Alexander said an investigation into the Aug. 22 deaths of Indiana State Police Lt. Gary Dudley and former Lake County Police Chief Gary Martin showed no basis for charging truck driver Gary Adams with reckless homicide.

Alexander, contacted at her office Wednesday, declined to comment on the possibility of Adams facing any other charges in the crash.

Authorities said Adams, of Kentucky, was driving a box truck on Indiana 63 near Covington when it rear-ended a rented box truck that was providing support to a group of bicyclists raising money for families of police officers who died on duty.

The collision pushed the support truck into some of the bicyclists, killing Dudley and Martin and seriously injuring another rider.

Alexander said she considered filing a reckless homicide charge, but after considering an investigation, state law and Indiana case law, she determined that the charge wasn't warranted.

Alexander said Adams wasn't under the influence of alcohol or controlled substances and was not in violation of any federal regulations that govern the amount of time a driver can be lawfully on the road. She also said that there was nothing in Adams' medical or driving history that would have made him unfit to drive.

She said state law defined reckless homicide as being done "in plain, conscious and unjustifiable disregard of the harm that might result and the disregard involves a substantial deviation from acceptable standards of conduct."

Alexander said that under Indiana case law, only gross deviations from the traffic code -- such as ignoring traffic signals at a high rate of speed, driving on a dark road at night without headlights, or intentionally crossing a road's center line without a legitimate reason for doing so -- would support a reckless homicide charge. Adams, she determined, made no such gross deviation.