Wreck that killed dancer called 'not a car accident' - Crime/Safety - NewsObserver.com

Cook is accused of driving drunk at nearly twice the posted speed limit on busy North Raleigh roads and causing a collision that ended the life of Elena Bright Shapiro, a 20-year-old Carolina Ballet apprentice on the threshold of a promising career.

Prosecutors contend that Cook, a doctor with a history of alcohol abuse, acted with malice when he got into his black Mercedes outside Piper's Tavern and barreled down Lead Mine and Strickland roads at a high rate of speed.

"He was down Strickland in essentially what was a missile," Assistant District Attorney Adam Moyers argued.

Under the second-degree murder charge, a jury will be asked to decide whether a man with a history of drunken driving charges acted with malice if, as investigators allege, he left the North Raleigh bar and sped along Strickland and Lead Mine roads while impaired.

To prove malice, North Carolina law requires prosecutors to show that the defendant intended to drive in a reckless manner that reflected knowledge that injury or death would likely result.

"This is not a car accident," Moyers said Tuesday in opening arguments. Rather, the case is about decisions that Cook made throughout his round of golf, his drinks with buddies and tavern stop in North Raleigh, where some witnesses reported seeing Cook stumbling drunk, he said.

"He chose to drink that day," Moyers said. "He chose to drive after drinking. He chose to fly down Strickland Road."

Defense lawyers contend that prosecutors don't have all the facts right.

Roger Smith Jr., one of the defense lawyers representing Cook, ceded in his opening statement that his client, indeed, had consumed alcohol that late-summer day. He also ceded that Cook was driving above the posted speed limit. He had made dinner plans that night with his wife, and was on his way home.

Smith said the death of Shapiro was "a tragic loss to the world."

"It's only human and natural that we feel great sadness over the loss of Elena Bright Shapiro," Smith said in his opening statement. "It's only human and natural to feel great anger toward Raymond Cook."

But Smith asked jurors to, in the calm light of the courtroom, listen to both sides and to weigh all the facts.

Defense lawyers hope to offer a very different portrait of Cook than the one prosecutors plan to present.

While prosecutors contend that Cook was loud and obnoxious at the Raleigh Country Club, then stumbling drunk at Piper's Tavern and the accident scene, defense lawyers plan to present witnesses who offer a different perspective.

After midafternoon opening statements, the prosecution presented its first two witnesses - Melissa Cassario, a woman who stopped at the accident scene, and Jeffrey Geisendaffer, who also was on the accident scene.

At some point in the next several days, Osmond Smith, the Superior Court judge overseeing the trial, will be asked to consider requests from the defense team representing Cook to suppress blood evidence and statements taken from the doctor shortly after the accident.

He also could rule on the defense team's request to limit testimony from a witness prosecutors hope to call to the stand, a woman who has told investigators she saw Cook kissing a female outside the tavern where a manager reportedly refused to serve him alcohol because of his behavior.

The trial, which picks up again this morning, is estimated to last two weeks.