Blog Post

Witnesses in Bakersfield Car Accident Case Testify


May 01, 2008
Topic: Auto Accidents

A team of expert witnesses has finished testifying in the vehicular manslaughter case against Gordon Douglas Tutton, who was involved in a fatal car accident last year.

61-year-old Tutton is accused of running a stop sign on the Lerdo Highway last August, and crashing his car into a SUV carrying a woman, her son and a friend. The boy, 16-year-old Brock Christian Bellue, was killed in the car accident. His mother, Bakersfield, California resident Kellie Roland, had been driving the car. She suffered broken ankles. The other person in the car was Jordan Root, the 13-year-old child of a family friend, who suffered minor injuries.

The weeks of testimony since the car accident has raised several possibilities, and new facts have come to light. For one, blood tests done on Tutton have revealed the presence of Valium and traces of marijuana in his blood. So, he wasn't just speeding and breaking traffic rules, but was also intoxicated. The case has now been handed to the jury who has to decide whether Tutton was behind the wheel of his car at the time of the car accident. Both Kellie and Root, who were in the car at the time of the crash, have firmly pointed to him as the driver, and said they have no doubt that he was the one driving. However, his defense team has rounded up three police officers who claim that after the car accident Shalee Cole, who was in the car with Tutton, confided that she had been driving the car. When asked to testify, Shalee invoked the Fifth Amendment, which could be seen as an admission.

There are several other factors that have sent the case swinging in either direction. For instance, defense experts have said that Cole suffered injuries that are consistent with someone who was driving at the time of the car accident. But emergency room doctors who treated Shalee after the car accident have said that she suffered no injuries to areas that could have been hurt were she driving, like on her chest. Cole's mother also played a part in the case, telling the jurors that her daughter had confided in her that she had been driving the car.

Tutton himself hardly paints the wrongly accused figure here. He has been accused of drunk driving in the past, and has faced prior charges of drug possession and selling marijuana.

Tutton's defense says he has been made a scapegoat in the car accident, and the police and the community in general, have been too quick to blame him. He said the proceedings sometimes resembled an "inquisition." The jury will continue deliberating on the matter, so we could have a few more days to wait until the truth about whether this was an "inquisition" or a regular DUI case comes into the open.

Regardless of whoever turns out to have been driving the car the night of the accident, we hope Brock's family will pursue all legal courses open to them.

If you have lost a loved one in a car accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.


The California personal injury attorneys at The Reeves Law Group represent victims of accidents, injuries and wrongful death throughout California from our offices in Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Diego County, Riverside County, San Bernardino County, Ventura County, Fresno County, Kern County, Sacramento County, San Fernando Valley, Long Beach, Antelope Valley, Torrance, Glendale, Bakersfield, Santa Ana, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Ontario, and Victorville.