Farries trial: Jury begins deliberations year after death

Editor’s note: This report includes details from trial testimony that may be disturbing to readers.

The screams alone haunted bystanders.

Could she hear them? Did she know that he was back there — fighting for his life, smoke drifting from his wounds?

Or was this a tragic, unimaginable accident?

After nearly three weeks of hearing evidence and testimony, only a jury can decide the answers to those questions.

The six men and six women who will decide Detra Farries’ fate began deliberations Thursday on a grim anniversary — one year after the day horrified onlookers honked their horns, waved their arms and desperately shouted for her to stop.

But she didn’t stop, and Allen Lew Rose, the Colorado Springs tow-truck driver attached by the ankles to a tow cable behind her GMC Suburban, was dragged to his death on Feb. 23, 2011.

Rose, 35, was ensnared at Hill Park Apartments, 360 N. Murray Blvd., as Farries, 33, drove away from an attempted towing.

The cable came off Rose’s tow truck as Farries drove away, but stayed on her rear axle.

During closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors characterized Farries as a heartless woman who not only felt the clunk of a tow hook as she drove away, but saw Rose being dragged through her side mirrors until the moment she managed to “whip” him off her vehicle.

“Why would you drive on the wrong side of the road? You’re jerking your car. You’re trying to get him off of your car,” prosecutor Jeff Lindsey said, referring to damning claims by several witnesses.

According to her defense, Farries was a desperate woman but didn’t know a man was being dragged to his death as she fled a $70 tow fee. In the middle of moving her eight children from Denver to Houston, she saw a tow truck driver and moved to save her family’s belongings, piled high in the back of her vehicle.

Rose, they say, had hooked a cable to her vehicle without her knowledge as she pulled forward, and then ran after her, leading him to get caught up in the cable.

With a loud-running engine, broken side mirrors and no view through her interior rearview mirror, they say, Farries could only make out a green car behind her — which she took to be Rose, chasing her in someone else’s vehicle.

She wasn’t looking for something she didn’t know was there, her attorneys say.

Public defender Eydie Elkins asked jurors to set aside horrifying images of Rose’s death and consider whether Farries’ actions met the legal definition of “recklessness” — when someone “consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk” of death.

“Recklessness” is a requirement for manslaughter and vehicular homicide, two of the felonies charged against her.

Driving the wrong way out of a parking spot to avoid a tow is “irresponsible” but it wasn’t reckless, Elkins said.

That’s because Farries didn’t know there was a cable on her car and “the coast was clear” at Hill Park Apartments — until Rose ran to the complex exit, where he was snagged as Farries turned onto Murray Boulevard.

Farries’ decision to drive past Rose as the two met at the exit was also “irresponsible,” Elkins said, but it would only be reckless if she knew about the cable. By the same logic, she couldn’t know she was leaving an accident.

Lindsey repeatedly scoffed at Elkins’ use of the word “irresponsible,” saying that’s a term that applies to forgetting Valentine’s Day, not causing a man’s death.

“These are excuses, not defenses,” he said.

“She’s blaming everybody else. And today it’s over.” One year after Rose’s death, Lindsey said, “it’s time to put the blame on her.”

The attorneys also clashed on differing eyewitness testimony and the nature of Farries’ driving behavior, with prosecutors saying that if Farries had driven the speed limit, or stopped at intersections, someone could have caught up to her.

Elkins asked jurors to focus on whether prosecutors presented any evidence Farries knew — and to remember that she is innocent until proven guilty.

“Is there ever a case where ... the horror of what happened to another person ... made us give up our legal principles?” she asked. “Is this that case?”

The most serious charge, leaving the scene of an accident involving death, does not require the jury to find that Farries intended to flee or even knew there had been an accident. The jury need only find that an accident occurred, and that Farries left the scene without reporting it.

To convict her of manslaughter and vehicular homicide, they need to believe that Rose died as a consequence of Farries’ recklessness.

Because prosecutors are seeking aggravated sentences, the hit-and-run count carries a potential maximum of 24 years. If convicted, she could be sentenced to up to 12 years on the two lesser felonies.

Defense attorneys unsuccessfully fought to have the hit-and-run charge dismissed before trial, arguing that Farries shouldn’t be eligible for such a stiff sentence for a death she didn’t intend to cause.

Prosecutors say the cruelty of Rose's death merits an aggravated sentence. She will be eligible for one if jurors find Rose died a “torturous, cruel and painful death.”

Jurors were released at 5 p.m. Thursday and will resume deliberations at 8:30 a.m. Friday.