In the case of Boca Raton bicyclist’s death three years ago, police and prosecutors changed their minds about who was driving the pickup truck that hit him.
Now it’s up to a Palm Beach County jury to decide if the right person stands accused of slamming into George Morreale’s blue Schwinn on Yamato Road near Interstate 95 on April 6, 2014
The DUI manslaughter trial of Paul Maida, Jr. begins Monday about 16 months after prosecutors dropped charges against his ex-girlfriend, Bianca Fichtel, and arrested him instead.
It was Fichtel who, one hour after the crash, told police she was driving her green Ford F-150 and Maida was her passenger, records show.
But after being accused for more than a year, Fichtel, 27, was cleared and Maida, 32, was charged with being the driver who struck Morreale on April 6, 2014.
What changed? Fichtel gave a sworn statement blaming Maida, and investigators got their hands on post-crash emails purportedly between Fichtel and Maida in which he wrote to her about wanting to make a confession.
Defense attorney Robert Resnick said he’s fighting to keep the potentially incriminating emails out of the trial.
“I can’t believe the mess I’ve made … I promise I am going to do everything I can so they don’t charge you and only charge me,” Maida allegedly wrote in one email.
Even if Circuit Judge Charles Burton permits the emails as evidence, Resnick hopes to raise enough doubts for the jury over whether Maida actually drove the truck. The meaning of the emails can be left up to interpretation, the lawyer said.
Moreover, the defense will argue the death of Morreale, 65, was caused by an accident — and wasn’t anyone’s fault — because of hazardous road conditions near the highway interchange.
“This was a tragic accident where a gentleman was killed riding a bike at a very dangerous intersection,” the lawyer said. “It’s a really sad case.”
Police say Morreale was an innocent victim who lost his life during his Sunday morning routine ride within a designated bicycle lane. Maida is charged with leaving the scene of a crash involving death; DUI manslaughter; driving while license canceled, suspended or revoked causing serious bodily injury; and false report of a crime.
Palm Beach County Assistant State Attorney Laura Laurie said she could not comment on the case while it is pending.
But court records show Fichtel is expected to be the prosecution’s key witness and offer testimony about events before and after the crash.
“It’s just a question of who you believe,” Resnick said.
Just after the crash, Maida told an investigator he was in the passenger seat, records show. But the officer noted Maida, like Fichtel, appeared to be impaired and “very confused.”
In an interview at the police station five days later, Maida said he hadn’t been driving because his license wasn’t active. Maida said he was holding his phone and reading text messages when he “felt like they hit a curb or a bump,” the officer later wrote.
At the scene, Fichtel asked to speak with a lawyer and then mentioned she regularly takes various medications; a blood sample taken from her that day detected nine drugs, including the pain medicine Oxycodone, according to a police report. Multiple bottles of prescription medications were observed in the pickup.
Three months later, Fichtel was charged with DUI manslaughter and placed on house arrest awaiting trial.
But on May 27, 2015, Fichtel went to the State Attorney’s Office to talk about the crash and its aftermath for the first time. She told prosecutors Maida was the driver who plowed into the bicyclist, but they switched seats at a red light without getting out of the cab, because he refused to turn back to the crash site.
Fichtel said she had let Maida drive that morning even though he appeared “stoned out of his mind.” Fichtel explained she was looking down at her phone when she heard the truck hit something, and she thought by looking at the damage to the truck’s hood it was a pole or a dog.
Fichtel also disclosed then that she and Maida had been emailing each other since the crash, and he had written her often of his desire to turn himself into police because he loved her and missed her.
After Fichtel signed her statement, Officer Adam Reisner filed a search warrant to obtain Maida’s emails from what was believed to be his Google account: “paulywallnutz1984@gmail.com,” according to a report. (A character nicknamed “Paulie Walnuts” was a mobster in the HBO series The Sopranos. Maida was born in 1984.)
Reisner received a CD containing the email records in November 2015, and the traffic homicide investigator also indicated that he linked the emails with a computer at the Boca Raton home Maida shared with his father. A month later, Maida was arrested.
“There are hundreds of back-and-forth conversations between he and Fichtel about the crash, and more specifically that he was driving and should be charged and not Fichtel,” the officer wrote.
Resnick said the jury shouldn’t see the emails because there is no proof that Maida actually wrote them.
The defense also continues to dispute Maida was the driver, and then misled the cops about it. And even if Maida was the driver, there is no proof he was intoxicated because his blood alcohol level was never tested after the crash, Resnick said.
The lawyer also questioned why authorities charged Maida with leaving the scene, but didn’t do so with Fichtel when she was arrested.
Police also interviewed three other witnesses, motorists who were near the crash when it occurred about 10 a.m. But they were unable to identify the driver of the pickup.
One witness, a woman driving ahead of the Ford, told police she heard a loud bang, looked in her rear-view mirror, and saw the bicyclist thrown from the impact. The witness followed the pickup until it made a U-turn at Congress Avenue, and was able to get its license tag number.
Morreale died at the scene from blunt force injuries, according to the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s office.
Even if Maida wins an acquittal, the former security guard remains the target of a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Morreale’s widow, Lois, three months after his arrest.
A recent pleading in that case notes that Officer Reisner gave a partial deposition in February in which he testified that at the crash scene he observed Maida “as being highly intoxicated to the point of being barely able to stand and on the verge of drooling.”
Lois Morreale has spoken publicly about losing her husband of 43 years, at a 2014 luncheon for victims of DUI crashes. He was an expert carpenter.
“On April 6 my husband went for a bike ride and never came home,” she said. “My husband was a gentleman. He should be here. He will never be a grandpop.”
mjfreeman@sun-sentinel.com, 561-243-6642 or Twitter @marcjfreeman
