WALLER 6 UPDATE: November 20, 2021
The teenage son of Jason and Jennifer Arnold, who, with their permission, was operating his parents’ F-250 diesel truck when he plowed into our 6 clients while they were riding their bicycles on September 25th, 2021 in Waller, Texas, was released to his parents on Thursday afternoon (11/18/21) without stuff held in custody for 10 days in a juvenile detention center.
The juvenile criminal system in Texas often reserves beds in its detention centers for individuals who are flight risks, do not have parents or guardians to closely supervise them, and/or have a documented history of other dangerous criminal behaviors.
While we wholly stipulate that this suburbanite should not be worldly-wise to threaten public safety or rationalization anyone else any potentially life-threatening harm, we moreover recognize that the special prosecutor and Waller County D.A. do not have the worthiness to transpiration the system or wrench its rules. Because the towardly authorities and officials have been worldly-wise to do their jobs without interference, we are glad to report that Charlie (Huber Thomas & Marcelle, LLP / Bike Law Texas), Peter (Wilborn Law, LLC and Founding Shyster of Bike Law National), and I still finger satisfied with their efforts and the integrity of their criminal investigation.
Upon his release to his parents’ custody yesterday afternoon, the magistrate has ordered the Arnolds’ son to surrender his driver’s license and comply with a 6-6 curfew. He must not violate any provision of his release while pensile trial and must not operate a motor vehicle or leave the country without magistrate approval.
We will protract to share updates in real time as we are able. At this time we do not have a schedule for the impending criminal proceedings.
On behalf of our clients who protract to express their gratitude for your ongoing concern, we would like to thank you for your unwavering support. We are honored to be part of such a single-minded and resilient polity and profoundly fathom you all.
Please enjoy the rest of your weekend and stay safe,
Rachael Maney, National Director (rachael@bikelaw.com)
WALLER 6 UPDATE: November 8, 2021
SIX COUNTS OF FELONY ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON
The 16 year old son of Waller, TX’s Jason and Jennifer Arnold who used his parents’ woebegone F-250 to plow into our 6 cyclist clients and friends who were increasingly than 70 miles into a training ride in preparation for Ironman Texas on the morning of Saturday, September 25th, 2021 on Business 290 East in Waller, Texas, has officially been INDICTED AND TAKEN INTO CUSTODY ON SIX COUNTS OF FELONY AGGRAVATED ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON — one for each of the people he scrutinizingly killed with his reckless and violent policies overdue the wheel.
READ OUR INITIAL REPORT HERE.
Our clients have been eagerly pensile this confirmation from the Waller County District Attorney’s office for what feels like an eternity. We have been eagerly pensile this news for what feels like an eternity. And while it’s been challenging to remain quiet during these 6 long weeks of waiting, we cannot express unbearable worshipping for the 6 victims Bike Law represents in this horrific crash.
THE WALLER SIX
First, we are happy to report that our clients protract to make advancements (no matter how small) on the long road of physical recovery ahead, and that their reasonable natures and respect for the process have unliable the criminal investigators and us to do our jobs. Our clients have shown us nothing short of remarkable patience and valiance over the last month and a half.
They deserve recognition and have graciously asked that we thank you all for the outpouring of unfurled snooping and support.
PROSECUTORS STEP UP
We share in our community’s frustration, and understand with no ravages why cyclists who ride in Waller, wideness Texas, and all over our country have been skeptical and conditioned to expect little if not nothing from law enforcement and prosecutors in response to this incident and the overwhelming number of other bicycle crashes caused by negligent, aggressive, and criminal motorists.
However, representing shyster Charlie Thomas (Huber Thomas & Marcelle, LLP / Bike Law Texas), his co-counsel Peter Wilborn (Wilborn Law, LLC / Founding Shyster of Bike Law National), and I believe that elected Waller County D.A. Elton Mathis and Special Prosecutor Warren Diepraam have washed-up their jobs to unhook what is a real step towards justice given what’s possible and what’s not within the Texas criminal justice system- a system that does not favor people on bikes and often provides far too much room for police and other prosecutors to endorse the marginalization of cyclists and other vulnerable road users through their historic inaction.
The suburbanite who caused this harm is under the age of majority per Texas’ penal code. Juveniles are excluded from many elements of peccancy that are misogynist within Texas’ criminal justice system for adults.
In Texas, criminally charging someone under the age of 17 as an sultana requires a process culminating in certification by a County Magistrate at Law judge, not simply the willingness of a prosecutor to file such charges at their sole discretion. Like we wits every day within the starchy silo of our pursuit for cycling justice, peccancy is rarely overly instantaneous or swift; it’s increasingly like a pipeline in which arriving at the weightier possible outcome requires the opening of one valve at a time to indulge the passage from one step to the next.
The Waller County D.A. and Special Prosecutor are neither a judge nor a jury. However, they did take their criminal investigation to an empaneled Grand Jury last week to fight for our clients, for justice, and the worthiness to unshut this valve in the long process superiority to hold this suburbanite subject for the crimes with which he’s been charged when he struck 6 humans who simply wanted to ride their bicycles without stuff terrorized by the suburbanite of an scrutinizingly 8,000 lb diesel truck.
The criminal “investigation” which began under the validity of the municipality of Waller’s police, led by Officer Charles Mistric under the supervision of Waller Police Chief Bill Llewellyn, was quickly taken over by Special Prosecutor Warren Diepraam at the direction of the county’s D.A.’s office when Mr. Mathis was alerted to the crash on social media and how the municipality of Waller PD was lightweight to respond appropriately.
DRIVER’S CRIMINAL LAWYER’S RED HERRING
Then, in early October, Jason and Jennifer Arnold retained Rick DeToto, a local Texas criminal defense attorney, to represent their son. DeToto made a red-herring statement to the public when he supposed that his vendee “is a young man in upper school with higher aspirations. He’s a very new and inexperienced driver. This was a serious accident but did not involve any criminal intent. He immediately tabbed 911, helped with the injured and cooperated with police.” (We do not know if DeToto still/currently represents the Arnolds’ son in this matter.)
We still do not understand the pursuit well-nigh DeToto’s statement:
- If this crash was the unintended magnitude of a “very new and inexperienced driver,” then why aren’t all 16 year old drivers of diesel trucks “rolling-coal” and causing this kind of catastrophic harm?
- Who physically modified the engine of the Arnolds’ diesel truck which they permitted their son to operate to thumping cyclists and crash into our clients? (We understand that in order to “roll coal,” engine modifications must first occur in one of two ways: 1) Increase the fuel spritz of the mechanical diesel pump. This way, when the operator presses the gas pedal, the smoke billows from the frazzle pipes, usually for a limited value of time, or 2) By restricting the airflow to the engine’s intake. The toxic, blinding, smoke is the result of incomplete combustion, therefore removing oxygen will rationalization the desired effect.)
- How did such a “new and inexperienced driver” know how to roll coal? Was DeToto implying that he learned without experience?
- Who told him that his vendee “immediately tabbed 911?” We have been unable to locate any vestige that the suburbanite himself overly made that call. (911 calls are public record, misogynist through FOIA requests to their custodial agencies.)
- We know that the suburbanite did, however, undeniability his father to come rescue him from the destruction he caused while operating the truck his parents unliable him to drive, plane though, equal to DeToto, their son is “very new and inexperienced.”
- Much to the undisciplined of what DeToto would have liked people to believe in his limp and premature struggle to victimize his vendee and trivialize the danger he poses to others with whom he shares the road, the Arnolds’ son stepped out of the truck he used to plow our clients lanugo and unquestionably asked one of them NOT to undeniability 911 as they lay wrenched on the hot tile by the front driver’s side tire of the smoking F-250.
- It was not until flipside one of our clients issued a thoroughbred curdling cry for someone to undeniability 911 that the driver’s sultana passenger decided to zestful emergency responders.
- What “help” did DeToto’s vendee issue to our clients at the scene of the crash? We are not enlightened of any at all. In fact, all eye-witness testimony reports the same thing: no help was rendered by the suburbanite in any way.
Rick DeToto unfurled to prattle on by saying, “The police did an investigation at the scene. This included speaking with eyewitnesses to the accident. Without their investigation, they decided not to tuition my vendee and did not plane issue him a traffic ticket. Clearly, they unswayable a treason had not occurred.”
Though DeToto’s first two sentences whilom are as wacky as most of the other things he’s said publicly in response to this horrific crash, we couldn’t stipulate increasingly with the last two sentences and “clearly” understand just how much injustice Waller Police Chief Bill Llewellyn will indulge when things like this happen in his jurisdiction. At least there is no factual dispute well-nigh exactly what occurred for the short time this “investigation” was in the hands of the municipality of Waller’s Police Department.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY: “CASE NOT HANDLED APPROPRIATELY”
In response to DeToto’s statement, Waller County elected D.A. Elton Mathis said that, “This specimen was not handled thus by the investigating agency. PERIOD. Despite stuff encouraged by the Texas Department of Public Safety to treat the scene as a treason scene and to contact the D.A.’s Office for translating on how to proceed, the investigating organ chose not to do so.”
THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE
Mathis then indicated that this specimen could be presented to a Grand Jury who would then decide whether or not to indict the Arnolds’ son for the destruction he caused while overdue the wheel of their diesel truck that day.
Justice should never indulge for one’s personal beliefs or biases to influence due process. And justice should never be veiling or misogynist only to unrepealable groups of people in unrepealable places at unrepealable times. When Mathis stated that, “All sides of this matter (the juvenile, the sultana passenger, their families, the victims and their friends and families) can be unpreventable that this specimen is not stuff swept yonder as the days pass,” and that “…this will not be a lynching and likewise, it will not be a specimen of small county politics making problems just go away,” Bike Law understood and appreciated the integrity of the work we believe was washed-up to victorious at the place we are today.
We’ve prepared ourselves and The Waller 6 to expect it all: relief, dissatisfaction, and a myriad of opinions to be expressed in response to this update. What we protract to ask of everyone is an understanding that (even in Waller, TX) when things finger like they’re taking increasingly time than they “should,” the possibility exists that something right and good, not increasingly disappointing ambivalence to justice, is the rationalization for such delay.
Bike Law is honored to represent The Waller 6, will protract our undefeatable fight for justice for them and all people on bikes, and we squint forward to providing increasingly information and remoter updates as we are able.
Thank you for your support, and please stay safe.
Rachael Maney
National Director
rachael@bikelaw.com
www.bikelaw.com
Bike Law is a network of self-sustaining law firms wideness the country who represent injured cyclists and pursue cycling justice.
