Police Want Manslaughter, DUI Charges for Garrison
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Prison Break is in Lane Garrison’s past, but actual prison could conceivably be in his future. Beverly Hills police recommended Wednesday that the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office seek felony vehicular manslaughter and DUI charges against the actor, stemming from a one-vehicle crash last month in which a teenage passenger riding in Garrison’s SUV was killed. Garrison, 26, registered a blood alcohol level of 0.20, more than two and a half times the state’s legal limit, and tested positive for cocaine following the crash, according to Beverly Hills Police Department spokesman Lieutenant Mitch McCann. There was no immediate comment from Garrison’s attorney, Harland Braun. In the course of their six-week investigation, police said they determined that Garrison was driving somewhere between 47 and 51 miles per hour, well above the 25 mph limit, when he lost control of his 2001 Land Rover on South Beverly Drive, causing the SUV to jump the median and hit a tree. Garrison and his three passengers were taken to nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where 17-year-old Vahaghn Setian, a student at Beverly Hills High School, died from his injuries. The two other kids riding in the car, both unidentified 15-year-old girls, were released after being treated for minor injuries. Garrison reportedly met the teens at an L.A. supermarket, where they invited him to accompany them to a party. Police Chief David Snowden said that the actor, whose Prison Break character Tweener was killed off earlier this season, drove to two different stores to purchase alcohol because the first one he visited wouldn’t sell it after 11 p.m. Braun said last month that his client had one drink at the party he attended and then woke up in the hospital the morning after the crash remembering nothing. “Why wouldn’t they arrest him if they thought he was intoxicated? They took him to the hospital. They didn’t take any field sobriety tests,” Braun told Fox News at the time. “Until you get all the facts in, after an accident like that where somebody’s injured, you can’t make that assessment,” McCann said Wednesday when asked why officers didn’t deduce Garrison’s DUI status at the scene of the crash. “The investigators did an outstanding job getting this wrapped up and turned over to the D.A.’s office in six weeks,” Snowden said. Previous estimates had the investigation lasting at least eight weeks. If convicted on the most serious charges proposed by the police—gross vehicular manslaughter with an enhancement for causing bodily injury or death to more than one victim, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs causing injury with an enhancement of having a blood-alcohol level in excess of 0.15 percent and contributing to the delinquency of a minor—Garrison could face more than 10 years in state prison. Police say the case is now in the D.A.’s hands and they will hold off making an arrest until charges are filed. |