Jurors to hear tape on crash

Police interview cleared for trial

His girlfriend told him to go when the police car’s blue lights lit up behind their stolen Nissan Maxima. So he went, reaching at least 70 mph and maybe even faster, murder suspect Jordan Matthew Vandenberghe told Little Rock police.

Less than a minute later, Vandenberghe lost control of the car and hit another vehicle in the 10000 block of Chicot Road, police said.

The impact sent the Maxima into a roll, and the car hit a mother and daughter who had been jogging on the sidewalk, flinging their bodies into a parked car. Mother of two Trendia Penn- Horton, 39, was killed. Her 18- year- old daughter, Nahtali Dashundra Horton, was seriously injured.

The Maxima came to a rest upside down. Police said Vandenberghe ran from the car but was quickly chased down and arrested.

Officers reported that Vandenberghe had heroin on him, and stolen credit cards and Social Security cards in his wallet. Also, he was named in a warrant for his arrest for failing to show up for court on a misdemeanor vandalism charge, according to reports.

Five hours later, after being treated at a hospital for

a concussion, Vandenberghe told detectives Kevin Simpson and Brad Silas why he refused to stop when an officer tried to pull him over on Baseline Road in September 2015. His driver’s license was suspended, he said.

“I asked my girlfriend what to do. She said let’s go, and we kept on going,” the Roland man said. “I remember hitting something. I don’t know what it was. I remember swerving, then unbuckling my girlfriend, and then I’m in the back of a cop car.”

A Pulaski County jury will get to hear those words and more next week at Vandenberghe’s trial, Circuit Judge Leon Johnson ruled Thursday after listening to the 13- minute interview played by prosecutors Tonia Acker and Ashley Bowen.

The judge rejected arguments

by defense attorney Leslie Borgognoni that Vandenberghe, because of the concussion he’d suffered, did not know what he was doing when he talked to police that night.

Vandenberghe is charged with first- degree murder, first- degree battery, felony fleeing, theft and drug possession. The charges together carry a potential life sentence.

“Fast enough that I wrecked,” Vandenberghe said when Simpson asked him to describe his speed that night. Pressed by the detective for more details, the defendant said he remembered passing cars and estimated that he was driving at least 70 mph, possibly reaching 90 mph.

“I never looked down to see how fast I was going,” he said.

Vandenberghe’s voice wavered when asked whether he saw any pedestrians. He told the detectives he did not and that other officers had told him

what had happened.

“They told me I killed someone,” he said.

The defendant repeatedly told the detectives that he couldn’t clearly remember everything that had happened. Simpson sounded skeptical.

“Do you really not remember or do you want not to remember,” the detective asked at one point.

Vandenberghe first told investigators that he didn’t realize the car was stolen, saying a friend whose last name he didn’t know gave him the car the day before.

“I’m not for sure whose car it was,” he told the detectives. “To be honest, it was given to me by a mutual friend … Victor.”

Later in the interview, the detectives told him they knew when and where the car had been stolen.

When they asked him if they’d see him on surveillance

video taking the car, Vandenberghe acknowledged he’d stolen the car himself. He also said he knew the credit cards in his wallet were stolen, but he would not say whether he’d taken them himself.

“I’m not going to say I did or I didn’t,” he said.

The Social Security cards came from another friend, Vandenberghe told the officers.

“I didn’t ask how they were acquired,” he said. “He [ the friend] asked if I could do anything with them, and I said yes.”

On Thursday, the handcuffed defendant, wearing an orange jail smock and sandals, briefly testified.

Vandenberghe told the judge that he has almost no recollection of meeting the detectives and said the signature on the document agreeing to be interviewed by police did not look like his handwriting.

“That’s not how I sign my papers,” he said.