Gazette Daily News Briefing, August 10
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for August 10, 2023.
According to the National Weather Service there will be some areas of dense fog before 10 a.m. in the Cedar Rapids area. Otherwise it will be mostly sunny, with a high near 88 degrees. There will be a slight chance of rain overnight Thursday into Friday.
The Swisher pickup driver accused of hitting abortion protesters at a June 24, 2022, demonstration testified Wednesday that his vehicle didn’t hit anyone.
The pickup driver, David Alan Huston, 54, is on trial this week in Linn County District Court on charges of assault by use of a dangerous weapon-vehicle, an aggravated misdemeanor, and leaving the scene of a personal injury accident. If convicted, he faces up to two years in prison.
Huston said he didn’t know about the court ruling and that he didn’t know about the protest.
Huston said he had stopped at the Second Street SE intersection behind a car.
The traffic light cycled twice as protesters crossed Eighth Avenue. When the light was green again, he said, the car in front of him moved forward and then stopped, so he went into the other lane to go around the car that was in the intersection.
The prosecution showed a surveillance video of the incident several times throughout the trial, which shows the truck driving into the crowd and continuing to move forward with demonstrators in front of it.
Assistant Black Hawk County Attorney Heather Jackson, during cross-examination, asked if Huston was frustrated because he’d had to wait through two traffic light cycles. He said he wasn’t.
Jackson asked if he hadn’t told Cedar Rapids police Sgt. Ryan Dunbar that he had “laid on the horn because people needed to get out of the road and this had gone on long enough.” He denied saying that until Jackson played him the police recording.
Huston then admitted he had made those statements during a July 5, 2022, interview. He also later admitted telling police he was going at a “slow rate of speed, and if they would have had a brain, they would have gotten out of the way.”
The jury will begin deliberating the case Thursday morning.
A Washington County woman was killed Monday after the car she was driving was hit by a pickup truck in Iowa City.
Kristina Pearson, 30, of Wellman, was driving north on Boyrum Street just before 1 p.m. Monday when her vehicle was hit by a truck heading east on Highway 6, causing her car to hit a third vehicle, according to the Iowa City Police Department.
Pearson and a passenger in her car were taken to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, where Pearson died later that day. The passenger remains in critical condition, according to a Wednesday morning news release from police. No other injuries were reported.
The driver of the truck — Drake Brezina, 24, of Riverside — was cited for a red light violation. The crash remains under investigation and additional charges are possible, authorities said.
