Archive for February 10th, 2010

The road rage story starts with a man named Speed – Robert Speed.

Pierce County prosecutors say Speed, 61, took a beating last year from Dennis Geyer, an angry neurosurgeon who didn’t appreciate being cut off on Highway 16.

Geyer, 38, is charged with second-degree assault with a deadly weapon enhancement. He is pleading not guilty.

The weapon in question was Speed’s Thermos, a well-used hunk of green metal, glass and plastic.

Prosecutors say Geyer followed Speed over the Narrows Bridge, confronted him at a Gig Harbor-area intersection, dragged Speed out of his car, slugged him, grabbed his Thermos and smashed it into the side of Speed’s face before driving away.

Opening arguments started Tuesday. They were short. Deputy prosecutor Diane Clarkson summarized the circumstances and the charge. Wayne Fricke, Geyer’s attorney, took his turn and offered a two-pronged argument: self-defense and weak evidence.

Geyer didn’t intend to hit Speed, Fricke said; he punched the older man because he was afraid of being kicked.

The Thermos allegation held no water, he argued. The victim couldn’t remember being hit with it and Geyer didn’t touch it, Fricke said. Forensic tests were inconclusive, and the only witness who claimed to see the blow had a shaky memory.

The witness, Leslie Perry, was the first to testify. Clarkson walked her through memories of March 2, 2009. Perry, running an errand, stopped at East Bay Drive Northwest and Wollochet Drive Northwest shortly before sunset.

She noticed something in the rearview mirror: a younger bald man on foot, pounding on the window of the van behind her.

In court, Perry couldn’t identify Geyer, but she remembered what she saw. The man was arguing with someone in the van, and then the van door opened.

“Could you tell who opened the door?” Clarkson asked.

“My best recollection was the man from outside opened the door,” Perry said. “The man from the outside reached in and grabbed the older gentleman and pulled him out. It appeared that he was extremely angry. The man on the inside was kicking to try to keep him away.”

“Did he punch him once?”

“No – multiple times,” Perry said.

The older man didn’t hit back. Perry remembered shouting at the bald man to stop and seeing the older man fall.

She saw the older man starting to get up. The bald man walked away, then stopped at the van and pulled something out of it – “something long, like a cylinder-type thing,” Perry said.

“What did you see him do with that object?” Clarkson asked.

Perry’s voice quavered.

“When the older gentleman got up, he hit the man so hard that he spun around, and I was screaming, ‘No, no, no.’”

On cross-examination, Fricke shot holes in Perry’s account. Hadn’t she seen Mr. Speed’s arms “flailing around” inside the car before the fight? Hadn’t she seen Speed pounding on the window? Hadn’t Speed opened the door, and not Dr. Geyer?

Perry didn’t think so. Fricke showed her passages from her deposition, given in October, and her statement to police, written the day of the incident. She admitted some details were different, but she had been hurried and nervous that day.

The victim was next. Speed, dressed in a suit and tie, spoke quietly and carefully. On the day in question, he had driven home from Seattle, eased his van onto Highway 16 westbound, and changed lanes. He heard a horn behind him.

“I saw an individual in a small car come up beside me, obviously upset,” he said. The man in the little car was waving at him with both hands, telling Speed to pull over. The two vehicles were near Fircrest, he recalled.

Did he see the man in the courtroom? He did. It was Geyer.

Speed remembered the back-and-forth as the two men rolled down the highway.

“I assumed I had probably cut him off or did something he didn’t like, so I turned and mouthed, ‘I’m sorry,’” he said.

Geyer wasn’t satisfied, Speed recalled. He kept waving.

“I just proceeded to ignore him,” Speed said. “I was not going to pull over.”

Geyer followed him over the bridge, Speed said, followed him to the intersection of East Bay Drive and Wollochet. Speed stopped, heard a car door open and close behind him, and footsteps. Geyer was at his driver’s window, yelling, “Open the door,” he said.

Speed looked down at the latch and realized his door was unlocked. Geyer saw the same thing.

“He immediately opened the door and hit me in the face with his fist,” Speed said.

Speed said he was close to blacking out. He remembered reaching for the only available weapon: the trusty Thermos his wife had given him 10 years earlier.

“I picked it up and I was gonna swing it at him,” Speed recalled. “In my mind I was gonna throw it as hard as I could, swing it as hard as I could. In actuality, my arm had almost no strength, it was almost like in slow motion. (Geyer) looked at the Thermos, saw it was coming at him and basically just took it away from me.”

Speed remembered Geyer pulling him out of the car. He’d kicked at him then, he recalled – all he could do. The rest was a blur. He was on the ground, and his face hurt, and then the hospital, and pain and medication. He started to say he’d been diagnosed with a detached retina. Fricke objected to that testimony, then took on the cross-examination.

And Speed had a cell phone, but didn’t call 911? Why not? Speed said it didn’t occur to him that he should until it was too late.

“I have a pretty clear memory up to the point where I don’t remember anything,” he said.

Contact Lynnwood Personal Injury Attorney Today.

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