Published on Sunday, May 15, 2005
in the Ft. Myers News-Press

FHP officers see death up close

They see the face of death on Lee County roads up close.

Traffic homicide investigators are the people who have to figure out what happened each time someone is killed in a traffic accident.

"You can get burned out on this job very easily," Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Owen Keen said. "We are constantly seeing death, death, death. We knock on the doors and tell families their loved ones are dead."

Keen and other investigators for FHP, Cape Coral police, Lee County Sheriff's Office and Fort Myers police have been faced with more fatal crashes than ever this year.

So far, 72 people have died on our roads. This is 38 more than the same time last year and 18 more than in 2003.

"We're having way too many fatalities," Keen said. "At the rate we're going, we're going to have a record year."

His group of 10 FHP investigators, who each juggle an average five cases per month, handle most of the traffic deaths. They are struggling to keep up, Keen said.

On Thursday, his team investigated three fatal crashes that left four people dead.

Cpl. Linda Powell was on her way to the autopsy of Cassandra Yardley, 37, of Naples, who died in a crash in Bonita Springs, when she got a call about another fatal on State Road 31 in North Fort Myers.

There, she found Israel Berrum, 30, dead after his Camaro pulled into the path of a dump truck.

Her supervisor, Keen, finished up the night at a double fatal on Palm Beach Boulevard in Alva in which Joseph Battaglia, 42, and Christopher Lee Martin, 26, died when their trucks hit head-on.

Seeing the bodies left in the aftermath of the crashes doesn't make going to work easy.

"You don't ever get used to it, but you get in a professional mode and overlook that aspect of it," said Powell, who became a homicide traffic investigator in 1994.

The investigative side holds their interest.

"Sometimes you go to an accident and nobody can tell you what happened. You have to re-create with nothing," Powell said.

Keen pointed to a manual that includes 64 math calculations used to figure speed, force of impact, when brakes were applied and other factors. FHP investigators take 200 hours of course work of nothing but math, Keen said. It is all used to reconstruct a crash.

It's not all numbers.

Officials have to rule out mechanics, too. A car involved in a fatal crash is examined bumper to bumper for malfunctioning brakes, lights, steering, tires and anything else.

The biggest challenge investigators face is putting a driver behind the wheel.

"I can find a vehicle all day long, but if you don't have the driver at the time of the crash, you have nothing," Keen said.

He referred to a hit-and-run crash on McGregor Boulevard in 2003 that left one man dead. Troopers tracked the Jeep involved in the crash, but the owner said he wasn't at the wreck.

"We don't have evidence to put him behind the wheel," he said.

One day, he said, he hopes to develop evidence that will prove the suspect was driving.