Was gruesome garbage accident preventable?

There is little agreement, except for this: One man shouldn't have been driving, and another man was crushed.

By THOMAS LAKE
Published June 24, 2007

PORT RICHEY - Walter Lee Jones was crushed to death on a bed of asphalt, minutes into his shift, by the churning wheels of a garbage truck.

Jones was a loader. He rode on the back and flung trash into the hopper. He fell off in the midnight dark of May 25, while the truck was in reverse. His body was badly mangled in the accident.

The accident's precise cause is mysterious. Investigators have yet to publicly assign blame. But the driver, Christopher Dellaquila, had nearly backed into Jones several times before, according to Jones's fiancee. And while their employer says Dellaquila was a good driver, there is no doubt he was also an illegal driver -- or that months earlier, in violation of his probation, he had tested positive for cocaine.

Dellaquila could not be reached for comment. But at minimum, according to court records, he knew he was driving on a revoked license. Those in a position to stop him say they knew only one fact or the other: that he did drive, or that he shouldn't, but never both. And so, for 10 months, he rolled on.

The St. Petersburg Times discovered a series of official errors and oversights in this case, which involves one private company and at least five government agencies.

"Who didn't make a mistake?" said Jo Ellyn Rackleff, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Corrections. "I can't find anybody."

This is the story of how one man fell under a garbage truck after another man fell through the cracks.

It started in Tarpon Springs on Sept. 15, 2004, according to court records, when Dellaquila sold seven-tenths of a gram of crack cocaine to an undercover detective.

He was 43 then, with a 10th-grade education, and more than a year passed before the authorities got around to arresting him. He was booked at the Pinellas County Jail on Jan. 5, 2006, on charges of sale and possession of cocaine, went free on bail the next day and, less than two weeks later, got a job driving a garbage truck.

He was hired by J.D. Parker & Sons in New Port Richey, a small trash-hauling business off U.S. 19 whose owners say they don't tolerate drug abuse.

But they don't run criminal background checks on employees. They check only driving records, and they often hire people on state probation. Sometimes probationers are the only ones willing to do such dangerous, malodorous work.

"We hire people on probation," co-owner Donna Parker said, "because no one else will."

Six months later, on July 27, 2006, Dellaquila pleaded no contest to the cocaine charges. He was sentenced to two years' probation and his driver's license was revoked for two years.

At least, it should have been.

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According to Ancestry.com, Dellaquila, also written as Dell' Aquila, is a rare Italian surname that can be traced back to the city of Caserta, near the southwestern coast. It is very easy to misspell.

When Dellaquila was arrested by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, the deputy wrote the name with an extra "l" near the end. In a less understandable mistake, the deputy also left the "r" off the end of Christopher. That spelling, both first and last names, was then used by other officials and turned up in several subsequent documents.

This misspelling may help explain why, after Dellaquila's conviction, the license revocation order got lost on its way to Tallahassee.

Julie Baker, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles, said the agency failed to revoke Dellaquila's license because it received bad information from the court system about whose license to revoke.

"They sent the record to us without a correct name, without a driver's license and without a Social Security number," she said.

However, Hazel Bure, assistant director of court services for the Pinellas County Clerk of Court, says she is sure her office sent the correct name. The Times could not determine which woman was correct.

Regardless of who was right, the correct order did not go through. And if a police officer ever ran a check on Dellaquila's license in the 10 months that followed -- as the Florida Highway Patrol did after the fatal accident -- the license would have shown up as perfectly valid.

Instead, the state database acquired the record of a phantom driver, with a name similar to Dellaquila's, for whom driving would now be an arrestable offense.

Baker would not disclose the incorrect name under which the revocation order had come in. She said all names in the database are protected by law.

- - -

Meanwhile, under the supervision of the Florida Department of Corrections, Dellaquila went back to driving the garbage truck. The DOC knew his license was supposed to be revoked; it was spelled out in his order of probation. But once again, crucial information went either unspoken or ignored.

On Aug. 3, state records show, Probation Officer Troy Bishop spoke to Donna Parker to verify Dellaquila's employment. He did not tell her Dellaquila's license was revoked. According to Rackleff, the DOC spokeswoman, Bishop saw no need to mention it because Parker told him Dellaquila was working as a laborer -- not as a driver.

Parker denies telling him that. But she says Bishop should have known Dellaquila was a driver: She says he reached Dellaquila on his cell phone one day while Dellaquila was driving the truck. Through Rackleff, Bishop said he recalled no such conversation.

In any case, Dellaquila kept driving. And on Dec. 13, in a court-ordered test, his urine came back positive for cocaine.

By definition, this was a probation violation. He could have been taken to jail. But Dellaquila asked for mercy.

"The offender stated extremely remorsefully that he had a drug problem and wished to get help for his addiction," Bishop wrote in a letter to the court about the violation. "This officer feels that the offender is sincere in his desire to gain help and recommend continue probation with drug offender conditions."

On Jan. 3, Circuit Judge Joseph Bulone took the recommendation. "No further action required," he wrote.

Bulone declined to be interviewed for this story. However, Circuit Judge Robert Morris Jr., who took Dellaquila's plea, spoke up in Bulone's defense.

"I would have made the exact same decision," Morris said, explaining that if all nonviolent drug offenders were put away, the prisons would overflow.

Still, when the Times told Dave Parker, the co-owner of J.D. Parker & Sons, about the positive test, he said he would have fired Dellaquila if he'd known.

"Why didn't they lock him up right then?" he said. "Why didn't they notify us?"

- - -

Walter Lee Jones was 28 years old. He came from a rough neighborhood in Miami. He had been convicted of theft and cruelty to a child. He was engaged to Estelle Montgomery, also 28, and they lived in New Port Richey. He liked to eat mangoes and watch Court TV and play a card game called spades.

He was a good worker, Montgomery said, but he and Dellaquila clashed. She said he told her Dellaquila had nearly backed into him several times. She said Dellaquila had done the same thing to her brother, Jacob Plummer, who was also a loader for Parker, and that Plummer and Dellaquila had nearly come to blows because of it.

In addition, Henry Keane, who lives on Chatam Lane, where the fatal accident later occurred, said he had recently seen a Parker truck driving erratically and jumping curbs. He said the truck had destroyed his neighbor's sprinkler head. Donna Parker confirmed that Dellaquila was the only Parker driver on that route.

Parker officials maintain that Dellaquila was a good driver and that they knew of no such incidents. They believe the fatal accident was not Dellaquila's fault.

At 12:19 a.m. May 25, according to her cell phone records, Jones called Montgomery for the last time.

They talked for 38 minutes, until it was time for him to begin his rounds.

"I'll call you first chance I get," he said. "Love you."

"I love you too," she said.

Dellaquila drove northeast from Parker's headquarters into Regency Park. Exactly what happened next remains unclear.

But at 1:25 a.m. on Chatam Lane, the neighbors heard a man screaming.

- - -

The state says it has changed the database to reflect Dellaquila's revoked license, rather than that of a nonexistent driver.

Trooper Larry Coggins Jr., a spokesman for the Florida Highway Patrol, said he expects Dellaquila to be charged with driving on a revoked license once the State Attorney's office finishes reviewing the case. He would not say whether Dellaquila had been tested for drugs after the accident.

Moments after the accident, Dellaquila looked a bystander named Michael Donehoo in the eye and said this:

"I'll never drive a garbage truck again."

Times staff writer Jonathan Abel and researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245.

[Last modified June 23, 2007, 22:12:59]