After five years, justice is in sight

The driver accused in a hit and run is found and charged with DUI manslaughter.

By MOLLY MOORHEAD, Times Staff Writer
Published January 12, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Photo by Molly Moorhead] Heather Haywood's mother was killed May 8, 2002, when she was hit by a vehicle on U.S. 19.

TARPON SPRINGS - Heather Haywood has had a long time - more than five years - to think about what she would say to the man accused of running over her mother and leaving her to die in the street.

Now that Landon Luepkes is in jail charged with DUI manslaughter,Haywood may finally get her chance.

"I would ask him how he could have been so cold," Haywood, 32, said Friday. "That sound. That sound of hitting a person and dragging her.

"How can you live with yourself?"

* * *

Luepkes, 47, was arrested in September in Virginia and brought back to Pasco this week. Police say he had been drinking much of the day on May 8, 2002, and was driving home from a video store in a friend's silver Dodge pickup when he struck Dawn Haywood as she tried to walk across U.S. 19 near Gulf Drive.

Luepkes kept going. Haywood, 45, died at the scene.

Days later, police got a tip that Luepkes, who had more than 30 prior arrests, had been washing blood from a silver pickup. By the time police saw the truck it had a new hood.

Investigators linked Luepkes to the crime by matching blood and tissue from the truck to Dawn Haywood's DNA.

But before police could arrest him, Luepkes had disappeared.

Last fall, near the tiny Appalachian town of Norton, Va., concerned citizens called authorities about a suspicious person walking up a steep mountain road in the dark. When a deputy found him, the man was alone without a flashlight. The bottom of his T-shirt was rolled up into his mouth.

He had a Florida ID card. It was Luepkes.

Details of his life since the crash are sketchy. There was no activity on his Social Security number or credit cards, which police were monitoring. His apartment in Virginia was littered with religious materials and old birthday cards. At his arrest, he muttered nonsense and quoted the Bible, but denied killing anybody.

* * *

The 51/2 years since Dawn Haywood's death have taken a toll on her daughter.

They were best friends. They talked every day. Dawn Haywood was a doting grandmother to Heather's son, just 3 at the time of the crash.

"I had a hard time coping," said Heather Haywood, who spent a night in jail at the end of 2006 on a driving charge.

She said that has been taken care of, that she's been through counseling and might return to her profession as a nurse's assistant. She has a special rapport with her patients, she said, doing their nails and makeup while joking with them about the unsightly effects of aging.

She's living in a modest mobile home off U.S. 19 in Tarpon Springs, near the Pasco line, with her boyfriend of eight years, Mark Kajdi. They hope to move into a new house soon.

With Luepkes' arrest, she said, the chapter of not knowing whether her mother would ever get justice is closed. His charge carries a possible sentence of 15 years in prison.

"His life has just come to an end," Haywood said.

"And ours," Kajdi added, "is just beginning again."

Molly Moorhead can be reached at moorhead@sptimes.com or 727 869-6245.

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 23:51:49]