Court Opinion

ID: 9700201
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:15:56.147369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:05.327124
License: Public Domain

CASTILLE, Justice,
dissents.
I respectfully dissent because I believe that there was sufficient evidence under the facts of this case to sustain appellant’s conviction for aggravated assault. The evidence demonstrates that appellant’s conduct fully manifested the enhanced degree of recklessness required by the aggravated assault statute.
Appellant consumed four or five beers and an unknown quantity of muscle relaxants or “downers.” 1 Appellant then got behind the wheel of a car and proceeded to a strip club on *540Roosevelt Boulevard, a busy, urban thoroughfare. Appellant was familiar with the busy road as he had driven along it on prior occasions. Appellant drove at a rate of speed in excess of the legal limit, estimated by eyewitnesses to be between 55 and 70 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, cutting off other cars and scraping the curb before plowing onto the sidewalk. The vehicle continued with such momentum that it severed a light pole, smashed into a SEPTA bus stop and continued some distance, carrying the entire billboard advertisement section of the bus stand structure with it. The car crossed over all the lanes of the intersecting Grant Avenue and stopped only after it crashed headlong into a brick wall. Appellant killed one person and severely injured another.
These facts clearly support that appellant engaged in reckless behavior under circumstances which manifested extreme indifference to the value of human life, as required by the aggravated assault statute. 18 Pa.C.S. § 302(a)(1); see Commonwealth v. O’Hanlon, 539 Pa. 478, 653 A.2d 616 (1995) (a higher degree of recklessness is required by the aggravated assault statute). Given appellant’s actions, there is no question that the evidence was sufficient to prove that appellant’s recklessness was such that “life threatening injury [was] essentially certain to occur.” Id. at 482, 653 A.2d at 618.
I find the facts of this case inapposite from those in O’Hanlon. In O’Hanlon, this Court held that where the appellant did no more than drive while intoxicated and run a red light, the degree of recklessness required by the aggravated assault statute was not established. This Court found that “[serendipity, not intention, placed the victim in his path when he drove through the red light.” Id. The record in O’Hanlon was not clear whether the appellant observed the victim’s car approaching, and no evidence other than the appellant’s decision to drive while intoxicated was offered to prove the degree of recklessness to support the aggravated assault conviction. Here, in addition to alcohol, appellant was under the influence of an unknown type of “downer” or muscle relaxant. The victims were visibly in the open waiting for the bus. Appellant, who was familiar with the busy road, should have antici*541pated the presence of other cars and pedestrians and should have known that his careless, daredevil driving while under the influence of numerous substances was likely to inflict serious injury on others. The matter sub judice is indistinguishable from Commonwealth v. Scofield, 360 Pa.Super. 552, 521 A.2d 40 (1987), alloc, denied 517 Pa. 593, 535 A.2d 82 (1987), in that the conduct of the driver therein was basically equivalent to that of appellant herein. The majority’s attempts to distinguish the two factual situations constitutes a distinction without a difference.
Accordingly, I dissent to that portion of the majority’s opinion that finds insufficient evidence to support appellant’s conviction for aggravated assault.
NEWMAN, J., joins this dissenting opinion.

. A witness who was at the party with appellant and ingested the same type of pills testified lhat the pills made him feel drowsy and less alert.