Christmas Eve fatal crash trial enters 2nd week

Prosecutors rested their case late last week, with laboratory results showing that 32-year-old Christopher Smith had more than eight drinks in his system when he drove the wrong way on Pecos Road and ran head-on into a van on Christmas Eve 2007.

Smith is charged with the second-degree murder of Trang Vo, 34, and three counts of aggravated assault for injuring Nuong Chung, 49, and his wife Tuyet Nguyen, 51, and Chung’s sister, 36-year-old Kiem Chung. The four were coming home after a special Vietnamese concert on Christmas Eve when Smith’s Buick Regal ran head-on into their Dodge Caravan, police said.

Nguyen, who was the owner and manager of Ahwatukee Nails, testified through an interpreter that because of her injuries, which included broken wrists, leg, finger, ribs, arm and spinal damage, she hasn’t been able to work, walk or even sit comfortably and is taking pain pills every day.

An off-duty police officer, Benjamin Baltzer, who lives at the end of Pecos Road, was retuning home that night and came upon the accident near the equivalent of 14th Street and Pecos Road. When he went to check on Smith’s condition, he said he could tell Smith had been drinking.

“When I walked up, I smelled it instantly,” Baltzer testified.

Officer Tomas Taylor, who was working that night as a patrol officer in Ahwatukee Foothills, also said he could smell the alcohol on Smith.

“It was strong, to the point it almost made your eyes water. You could smell (alcohol) 2 feet away,” Taylor told the jury.

Laboratory results of blood taken at the hospital about 45 minutes after the crash showed Smith’s blood alcohol concentration at 0.20 percent, more than twice the legal limit.

Smith’s sister testified the family gathered Christmas Eve at their father’s house, in The Foothills Reserve subdivision at the end of Pecos Road. She said her brother and father were drinking as they all nibbled snacks and opened presents.

She also testified that at some point, their step-mother insisted that Smith stay the night because he had been drinking so much, and that they were going to take his keys away from him so he couldn’t drive.

That contradicts Smith’s defense attorney. Charles Shell, who has insisted that his client never intended to drive anywhere and was planning all along to spend the night with his parents, then go to breakfast and a movie on Christmas Day.

Shell told the jury that while his client did drink, and did drive the wrong way on Pecos Road from 27th Avenue to past Desert Foothills Parkway, and did crash into the van, it wasn’t because of the alcohol, but could have been because he was sleep driving.

His expert witness, who is scheduled to testify Feb. 9, is expected to say that if Smith went to sleep while drunk, he could then have gone driving without knowing he was behind the wheel.

“Anything that happened after that is a sleep incident,” said Shell, pointing out that the law reads that the prosecution must prove that what Smith did was a voluntary and conscious act.

If found guilty, Smith faces between 10 to 22 years for the murder charge alone.