Cousin, Friends Wait for Justice in Lafayette Crash Case

There aren't a lot of people left to remember Dale Zenor or how he died, waiting for a light to change in Lafayette nearly three and a half years ago.  Many are strangers, who just happened to be passing by.

Every March 22, the anniversary of his death, Zenor's Martinez Rod and Gun club pals toast his memory with his favorite libation - ice cream - and his cousin Greg Mariano drives by Acalanes High School and the intersection where Dale died, blinking back tears.

"That's probably why this has gone on so long," says Regina Bronson, a family friend who has seen the toll the intervening years have taken on Mariano. "There's hardly anyone left to fight for Dale anymore."

Dale Zenor was 55, unmarried, and with most of his relatives already gone ahead of him when he stopped his Mazda Miata behind a line of other cars at Stanley Boulevard and Pleasant Hill Road that afternoon in 2007, everyone waiting for the light to change. His was the last car in line.

Investigators say he was probably unaware of the car racing up behind him, though he may have looked up at the sound of an engine revving at high speed milliseconds before the crash.  Police would not say how fast the BMW M3 sedan was going when it rear-ended the Miata, pushing the car 230 feet up over the cars in front of it with an impact one witness described as "bomb-like." A motorcyclist trailing the Beemer when it blew through a stop sign on Stanley Boulevard said it pulled away from him at 55 mph-plus.

Chuck Poloka, 46, told officers he saw the BMW accelerate to 50 or 60 mph on Stanley near the high school, a 25mph zone.  Other witnesses say it was going faster. Investigators would only confirm there were no brake marks at the point of impact.

The man driving the BMW, Tracy businessman David Caspillo, 41, walked away from the crash. Bystanders tried do what they could for Zenor that day, someone tried to give him a drink of water before an emergency responder said it was no use. Five other people were also pulled from their damaged cars, suffering from minor to moderate injuries.

That was 3 years, 3 months, and 19 days ago, Greg Mariano said when Patch interviewed him a week and half ago.

"If you had told me then that this would still be going on today I would have thought you were crazy," he said, standing at Stanley and Pleasant Hill Road.  "It's like nothing ever happened."

No one, neither police nor the special accident reconstruction team called in to investigate the crash, was able to say conclusively why Caspillo was driving as he was that day. The crash was one of several high-profile traffic accidents in Lamorinda that year, leaving people upset and calling for increased enforcement and change.  But when Caspillo, an amateur weekend car racing enthusiast, entered a plea shortly after the collision it stunned the community: not guilty by reason of insanity.

"Mr. Caspillo was en route to his birthday party after traveling on business for several days," defense attorney and former county prosecutor Dirk Manoukian said at the time.  "An enormous amount of work, lack of sleep and food, and an undiagnosed mental condition contributed to a manic, sleeplike state that hindered Caspillo from reacting to the danger before him."

Court observers called the plea a delaying tactic. Mariano's hopes for a court trial evaporated as Caspillo underwent a mental evaluation but was then free to carry on -- able to drive, to go back to his job, to celebrate the holidays with family and friends, while court dates kept getting delayed. The lead assistant district attorney assigned to the case resigned in April of this year, handing it off to another. 

When a jury was finally empaneled and court convened in June of this year attorney Manoukian pitched forward, complained of chest pains during jury selection, and collapsed.

Mariano, who has had paramedic training, rushed to help him and was later struck by the irony of the situation. The judge sent the jury home and called off the trial.

"I saw the guy in trouble and all I could think about was helping him out," Mariano says. "When I was walking out of court I was thinking: 'Our lives are in ruins, my cousin is dead and I'm helping the man who is helping the man who did it.'  It shook me."

The county prosecutor who inherited the case, Simon O'Connell, has said he was "disappointed" that it has taken three years to come to trial, but that he remains committed to getting Zenor's case heard.

"Unfortunately, I don't have any answers as to why (it has taken this long)," he wrote.

Today, Mariano battles a medical condition of his own. He's committed to helping an elderly aunt of Zenor's, and is working on a way to support what's left of the dwindling family before they, too, are gone.

"The more I think about it, the more it confuses me," he says. "My cousin is dead, others were hurt. The person who did it has never been in handcuffs, admits to being impaired, but is allowed to drive and live his life. My belief in the justice system has been shaken and I want justice for my cousin."