COOPER TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Five 911 calls were released Wednesday from the fatal crash that left five bicyclists dead and 4 others severely injured. 50-year-old Charles Edward Pickett Jr. is alleged to have intentionally driven his pick-up truck through a group of bicyclists in the 5500 block of N. Westnedge Ave in the evening hours of June 7.
Charles Pickett Jr.
Michigan State Police also released new aerial drone footage of the incident. The video showed first responders lining North Westnedge Avenue leading up to a blurred view of several bicyclists lying on the shoulder, before Pickett's dark blue pick-up truck.
"I'm at the Central High School and we just almost got ran off the road by what I'm pretty sure is a drunk driver. He's in a blue pickup truck and I got the license plate but he saw us looking at him and pulled around and now we lost him. We’re trying to find him," one call begins. The dispatch operator at Coloma Township Police responds, “Well, don't follow him around."
That same caller goes on to describe the driver, "It was a gentleman with salt-and-pepper kind of hair I want to say, a dark T-shirt and he had like a 'cigarillo' type thing in his mouth. He ran over a sign here at the front of the school."
Another call from a man audibly distressed, “I’d like to report a crazy driver hearing west on Arboretum Pkwy.” He goes on to describe the driver almost losing control of his vehicle in front of him.
Photo taken outside a home on G Avenue
“Can you send an officer to West G Avenue? I just had a pickup truck come on the west side of my house, went right through my front yard," another caller tells a Kalamazoo County Dispatch operator.
The five victims killed in the crash were identified as Fred Anton (Tony) Nelson, 73, of Kalamazoo; Larry Paulik, 74, of Kalamazoo; Debbie Bradley, 53, of Augusta; Suzanne Sippel, 56, of Agusta; and Melissa Ann Fevig-Hughes, 42, of Augusta.
The four people injured in the crash are Paul Gobble, 47, of Richland; Sheila Jeske, 53, of Richaland; Paul Runnels, 65, of Richland; and Jennifer Johnson, 40 of Kalamazoo.
Pickett is undergoing a mental competency exam. After his bond was denied, he sits in jail charged with five counts of second-degree murder, and four counts of reckless driving seriously injuring four people.
