NEWS

Alleged drunken driver acquitted in Parsippany fatal

Peggy Wright
@PeggyWrightDR

A Morris County jury on Monday acquitted a Dover resident of recklessly causing the death of a pedestrian on Route 10 in Parsippany by driving while intoxicated.

Fabio Aristizabal, left, with defense lawyer Walter Laufenberg.  Aristizabal was acquitted Oct. 5, 2015, of vehicular homicide in the death of a Parsippany man.

The jury of seven women and five men who heard the vehicular homicide trial before Superior Court Judge William McGovern in Morristown deliberated about three hours before declaring Fabio Aristizabal, 61, not guilty of recklessly causing the death of Richard Oberst, 64, of Parsippany, on Dec. 22, 2012.

Oberst died about 12 hours after he was struck while walking along Route 10 around 1:54 a.m. while snow flurries swirled. The jury was not told that Oberst had been released a day earlier from a psychiatric facility.

"I'm happy, my client's happy.  The jury did the right thing," defense lawyer Walter Laufenberg said.  His client, who was assisted at trial by a Spanish-to-English interpreter, was surrounded by his wife, son, daughter and a friend after the verdict. No relatives or friends on behalf of the victim attended the one-week trial.

The jury had a difficult task of deciding whether Aristizabal was legally intoxicated and acted in a criminally reckless manner.   Aristizabal consented to having his blood drawn at a hospital and the results of a sample drawn about two hours and 20 minutes after the incident showed his blood-alcohol concentration to be 0.073 percent -- less than the 0.08 percent BAC at which a driver is considered legally drunk in New Jersey.

Morris County Assistant Prosecutor Peter Foy had presented testimony from a State Police scientist, who extrapolated back to the time of the crash and calculated that Aristizabal's BAC was actually between 0.09 percent and 0.14 percent.

While the scientist said the BAC could have been over the legal limit at the time of the crash and was in the process of dropping when blood was drawn, the scientist also conceded that the BAC could have been rising when blood was drawn.  Laufenberg urged jurors to find that the BAC was below the legal level of intoxication at crash time and argued that Aristizabal was not reckless.

Laufenberg had called the death "an unspeakable act" but said it was an accident and said the victim had stumbled onto the road at the point he was struck.

While acquitted of a crime, Aristizabal was told to appear Tuesday before McGovern, the judge, to resolve an outstanding motor vehicle summons that charges driving while intoxicated for the same incident.  He faces a loss of his driver's license and monetary penalties and the judge can use evidence from the trial in determining the penalties.

    Staff Writer Peggy Wright: 973-267-1142; pwright@GannettNJ.com.