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Driver convicted of DUI manslaughter
By DAVID KARP, Times Staff Writer TAMPA -- Early one morning, two cars loaded with young men headed north on Interstate 275. Riding in one car were three medical students from the University of South Florida, celebrating the end of first-year final exams. Edward Woodward, a second lieutenant in the Air Force, was the designated driver. In the other car were three friends who had spent the night in Ybor City. Behind the wheel was Jermaine Bostick, then 20, driving close to 110 mph in a construction zone, without a driver's license, after drinking so much alcohol he had gotten sick in a parking lot. "You have two groups of people," prosecutor Curt Allen told a jury Wednesday. "You have a group that does everything right . . . On the other side, you have a group that does everything wrong." On Wednesday, after deliberating less than 30 minutes, a jury found Bostick guilty of slamming into the car with the medical students, killing one of them. He was convicted of vehicular homicide, DUI manslaughter, leaving the scene of a fatal crash and driving without a valid driver's license. Circuit Judge Rex Barbas sentenced Bostick to 30 years in prison, the maximum penalty. "It means that our legal system works like it is supposed to," said Woodward's mother, Ann Howell. Her son, 25-year-old Eugene Woodward, a first-year medical student who once volunteered to help the poor in Nicaragua, died in the fiery crash. Sitting on the witness stand in his blue military uniform, his twin brother, Edward Woodward, told jurors about the crash. "It felt like someone picked the back end of the car and flipped it over," he said. He panicked when he realized his twin brother was trapped inside. "I am going crazy," Edward testified. "I am screaming. All of a sudden everything is on fire." As he saw flames race toward the car, he struggled to pull his brother out of the back seat. Friends pulled him away seconds before the Bronco exploded. The twins, born 40 minutes apart at Bayfront Medical Center, had spent their whole lives together. Both graduated from St. Petersburg High School, attended the University of Florida and joined the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. Both got degrees in nutritional science, but Eugene also studied microbiology to attend medical school. He decided to become a doctor, in part, after watching his cousin, Shawn, 24, die in the hospital after being struck by a drunken driver in Pinellas County six years ago. Both brothers had gone to court to watch that DUI case. Edward, however, decided to join the Air Force and works as a flight navigator. He hopes to become an F-15 fighter pilot. In the other car, Bostick was serving probation for reckless driving at the time of crash. He had gotten out of prison a month earlier on those charges. After the crash, Bostick fled the scene. Eight hours later, after getting a tip, troopers arrested him and placed him and his friends in the back of a cruiser. There, Bostick admitted that he had been drunk and criticized a friend for talking to police. He didn't know it, but troopers were taping the conversation. Bostick's lawyer, assistant public defender Harvey Hyman, said he plans to appeal. The judge allowed the prosecutor to make emotional appeals to the jury rather than limit comments to the facts, Hyman said. "I would not feel overconfident about this case being upheld because of the way it was tried in a very zealous fashion, but in an overzealous fashion," said Hyman, a former prosecutor. "The jury, if they are going to decide his guilt or innocence, should decide it on the evidence," Hyman said. Edward Woodward, however, praised the prosecutor as "extremely professional" and committed to the cause. "I think he went above and beyond the call of duty," he said.
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