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THOMAS LAKEOne day after a Times story, Michael Wiley is arrested on a felony warrant. He could go to prison for five years.
PORT RICHEY -The Paradox of Michael Wiley is not that he can drive a car without arms. That is only the beginning. The paradox comes from how he drives. Not the physical method by which he turns the steering wheel, which involves the wedging of his left stump into a crevice near the horn, but the things he carries - illegal drugs, sometimes - and the things he smashes - other cars, occasionally -- and the speeds he reaches -- 120 mph in a green Corvette with deputies on his tail, at least once.
The Paradox of Michael Wiley, then, goes something like this:
1. Driving makes him feel free.
2. Driving puts him in jail.
The latest arrest came Monday, one day after the Times ran an in-depth story about him on the front of the Floridian section. He had been cited June 19 for habitually driving on a revoked license and possession of methadone without a prescription. The State Attorney's Office filed felony charges in the case earlier this month, and it was Monday by the time deputies picked him up.
The citation came after a deputy caught him behind the wheel on Kimberly Oaks Drive in Holiday. But Wiley insists he was not actually driving that day.
"I didn't have a key in the ignition," Wiley, who went free on $5,000 bail six hours after he was booked, said in a brief telephone interview Tuesday. "I was just sitting in the driver's seat."
Nevertheless, authorities want to crack down. Court records show he has been caught at least 19 times driving with his license suspended or revoked. And though he has served short prison sentences before, Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis said judges tend to take pity on him because of his disability. Wiley lost both arms and part of his left leg when he was 13 after an accident involving an abandoned electrical transformer.
This time, the state will ask a judge to send Wiley, 39, to prison for five years -- the maximum allowed by law.
"He has a hideous record," Halkitis said. "It's just got to end."
Wiley said in a previous interview that he learned how to drive when he was 15, on a friend's old Pontiac Catalina. He can even drive a stick shift in a pinch, although he cannot tie his own shoes or pour himself a drink.
He says that if he could get his license back free and clear, he would never go to jail again. He claims he hasn't driven a car since June.
But this leads to the other side of the Michael Wiley Paradox.
Driving is the main thing that gets him locked up.
And being locked up seems to be the only thing that will keep him from driving.
Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or 727 869-6245.