TROY, Mich. (AP) -- A 21-year-old firefighter trainee has pleaded not guilty to charges that accuse him of being highly intoxicated when he crashed his speeding car into a patrol car, killing a police officer.
The May 13 crash occurred moments after Officer Gary Davis, a 12-year police veteran in Oakland County's Bloomfield Township, arrested a drunken driving suspect on southbound Interstate 75 in this Detroit suburb.
Joshua Campbell of Royal Oak is charged with second-degree murder, drunken driving causing death to emergency personnel, failing to use care while passing a stationary emergency vehicle causing death and drunken driving causing serious injury.
The four felonies are punishable by up to life in prison, 20 years, 15 years and 15 years, respectively.
Campbell, who was to graduate May 14 from the Oakland Fire Training Institute, had been drinking with friends in Canada, said The Daily Oakland Press of Pontiac.
Campbell surrendered for arraignment at District Court in Troy. He was released after posting 10 percent of a $100,000 bond, said defense lawyer Richard M. Lustig. A preliminary examination is scheduled June 14.
Lustig told the Detroit Free Press that his client ``has the utmost respect for the police officer. ... He's sorry.'' But Lustig said Davis was negligent in trying to cross several lanes of traffic to get to the turnaround lane to reach northbound I-75.
``Officer Davis had every right to expect he could drive across the freeway to use the emergency turnaround,'' county Prosecutor David Gorcyca told The Detroit News.
Gorcyca said Campbell had a blood-alcohol level of 0.17 percent, more than twice Michigan's legal limit of 0.08 percent. Investigators said witnesses reported Campbell was unable to stay in one lane and was driving more than 100 miles per hour.
Davis, 36, had handcuffed a 26-year-old Madison Heights man and put him in the back seat of his squad car.
Campbell and the drunken driving suspect were hospitalized after the crash.
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