Hit-and-run driver sentenced to prison
By David Waite
Advertiser Staff Writer
A 23-year-old Michigan man was sentenced yesterday by a state judge to a 10-year prison term for a hit-and-run accident last year that caused the death of veteran police officer Dannygriggs Padayao.
Michael Coulter, a former construction worker, pleaded guilty in July to one count each of first-degree negligent homicide and leaving the scene of an accident in which someone was seriously injured or killed.
At the sentencing hearing yesterday, city prosecutor Peter Carlisle urged Circuit Judge Dan Kochi to make an example out of Coulter that drunken driving will not be tolerated in Hawai'i.
Carlisle said evidence showed that Coulter had consumed between four and six beers before the accident and had an open beer can in the Chevrolet pickup truck when he struck Padayao. The officer, 46, was setting out flares near the centerline of Kamehameha Highway near Johnson Road on Windward O'ahu in April of last year, directing traffic through the scene of an earlier accident. The impact from Coulter's truck threw Padayao into the path of an oncoming vehicle, further injuring him.
Carlisle said court records from Michigan show that Coulter was convicted of drunken driving following a 1996 incident in which his car skidded of an icy road and wound up in a ditch. His blood alcohol content in that case was determined to be 0.17, Carlisle said, more than twice the amount at which someone is determined to be alcohol-impaired under Hawai'i law.
Carlisle also said that while Coulter was permitted to return to Michigan to await the criminal proceedings against him, he was stopped for a traffic violation there but should not have been driving since Kochi had revoked his license.
"And yet, ... (Coulter) tells his probation officer he doesn't have a problem with drinking," Carlisle said. "It's called denial, denial, denial."
After hitting Padayao, Coulter abandoned the truck and fled from the scene. He later told police officers he was not involved and that the truck had been stolen from him earlier in the day on April 30, 2001.
When given an opportunity to speak, Coulter turned to Padayao's family members, relatives and friends who lined the gallery and apologized. "I'm so sorry for the way I reacted, it was so stupid," Coulter said. "I should never have run. It was the most terrible horror I have ever experienced. My family wanted to reach out to you but was told not to.
"I am so sorry for what you've gone through," Coulter said.
His lawyer, Richard Hoke, told Kochi that if anyone else but a police officer had been killed, the city would have been subjected to a negligence suit because of the way Padayao and another unnamed police officer handled the scene of the earlier accident.
Neither Padayao nor the other officer was wearing white gloves or reflective vests even though night had fallen, Hoke said. While flares were laid out earlier to warn approaching motorists to slow down, those flares had been extinguished before Coulter's truck struck Padayao, he said.
And while two police cars were at the scene, they were parked off to the side of the road and neither had its blue lights flashing, Hoke said.
Coulter steered his truck a little over the center line to avoid hitting a car involved in the earlier accident that was partially blocking his lane and simply did not see Padayao, Hoke said.
He asked Kochi to sentence Coulter to probation.
But Donna Borengasser, who described herself as Padayao's "life mate," told Kochi of the tremendous void Coulter created in her life, her daughters' lives and her granddaughters' lives.
Borengasser said she and Padayao were looking forward to retiring and had begun looking for a home on the Big Island, one with multiple bedrooms and a swimming pool, a place where they could spend time with their grandchildren.
She remembered Padayao as a dedicated and doting father figure to her three daughters from a prior marriage.
"Michael Coulter, because of you, Danny never came home," Borengasser said.
