ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701230034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
THE 21-YEAR-OLD VICTIM received a broken leg when the woman, who was fleeing police, hit the car he was in.
A woman who led police on a chase from Interstate 581 into a South Roanoke residential area was ordered Wednesday to pay $135,000 to a man injured in the crash that ended the pursuit.
After hearing testimony that Phuong Spence was driving drunk the night of May 6, 1995, when she tried to outrun a state trooper, a jury in Roanoke Circuit Court ordered that she pay compensatory and punitive damages to Johnny Stutts.
Stutts, 21, suffered a broken leg when Spence crashed head-on into a car he was riding in at Jefferson and 22nd streets near Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
Brent Brown, a Roanoke lawyer who represented Stutts, mentioned several recent chases that have ended with fatalities in the region as he asked the jury "to make a statement that we're not going to tolerate this kind of conduct."
At the time of the crash, police estimated that Spence was running stop signs and driving as fast as 65mph on residential streets with 25mph speed limits.
Police testified that Spence was clocked doing 83mph on I-581, but that she sped up to about 110 as a state trooper tried to pull her over, Brown said. After taking the Wonju Street exit, Spence led police on a wild chase through the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, back onto Franklin Road and into a residential area.
Spence sideswiped a police car before she hit the car Stutts was in. Spence, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.11percent at the time, was convicted of drunken driving, leaving the scene of an accident and impeding police. She served 15 days in jail.
The jury awarded Stutts $125,000 in compensatory damages to cover his pain and suffering and the $19,000 it cost to repair his leg with a surgically implanted rod and pins.
The jury also ordered Spence, who was 30 at the time of the incident, to pay another $10,000 in punitive damages.
Spence admitted liability, so the jury was asked only to decide damages.
Brown said the verdict "took into account the very limited financial resources of the defendant, but it still said we will not tolerate this kind of behavior."
LENGTH: Short : 49 linesby CNB