Ex-officer goes on trial in crash that killed UTSA student
A former deputy U.S. marshal accused of intoxication manslaughter in the death of a UTSA graduate in 2020 didn’t have his lights on when he slammed into a vehicle that was trying to exit Loop 1604, prosecutors said as his trial opened Thursday.
Jonathan Paul Jones, 43, is accused of driving drunk and hitting a vehicle driven by Taylor Angelle Mccowan, 23, who was exiting the highway at Babcock Road.
Jones was 40 when San Antonio police arrested him on a charge of intoxication assault following the head-on crash. Reports indicate he was driving a pickup the wrong way onto Loop 1604 around 1 a.m. on Jan. 31, 2020, when he hit Mccowan’s sedan.
Prosecutor Jordan Brown told the jury in his opening statement that witnesses would tell them Jones tried to start his vehicle five times to flee the scene, but was stopped by those trying to help.
“Taylor was driving the right way when the defendant comes up the wrong way. She only had a second to react,” Brown said.
He told the panel the defendant did not have his headlights on. Mccowan swerved to the left as Jones took evasive action and turned to the right.
“That was Taylor’s left. He went into the flow of and against traffic,” Brown said, noting that blood evidence would show that Jones was “legally intoxicated, above the limit.”
“Taylor was pinned in her vehicle, her breathing was shallow,” Brown told the panel. “There were no signs of comprehension. She could not answer questions.”
“They had to remove part of her skull, and she suffered severe trauma to her legs. The force of the impact pinned her inside the vehicle. The roof of her car had to be chopped off to get her out,” Brown told jurors.
Mccowan, a graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio who was a devout Christian involved in missionary and mentoring, was taken to University Hospital, he said. Later, she was transferred to Ben Taub Hospital in Houston to be near family. She never regained consciousness and was on life support until her death on Feb. 15, 2020.
Defense attorney Mark Thiessen told the panel that although the incident was “terrible, this isn’t about emotion, it’s about justice.”
Prosecutors, he said, “want you to count on emotion.”
Thiessen spent much of his opening statement telling the jury about Jones’ family, his accomplishments and joining the U.S. Marshals Service in 2010. He said Jones’ family lived in San Antonio, but he was based in Del Rio and made the trip each weekend until his transfer to the Alamo City in 2020.
Thiessen said Jones worked a long day Jan. 30 but was going to meet a buddy at a food truck to eat that night. He said Jones put instructions into his Google Maps to get him home, but the application took him to Barshop, a one-way street that was not marked.
“There’s no one-way sign,” he told the panel. “To this day, it does not say one way.”
Thiessen said Jones was not at fault.
“This should be a civil lawsuit,” he told the panel, suggesting that other entities responsible for the street signs should be sued.
Thiessen also said he had “no idea what she (Mccowan) was doing there” at that hour and suggested to the jury that her reaction time was “100 percent impaired.”
“She doesn’t react at all,” he told the panel. Other witnesses who saw the crash are “alive today” but Mccowan was not wearing a seat belt, Thiessen said.
“This was a tragic accident. Had she been wearing a seatbelt, her chances of survival would have been increased,” he said.
Court records indicate that Jones’ charges were upgraded following Mccowan’s death. He has been out on bond since the crash, was ordered not to drink alcohol, have a Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor device on his vehicle, and undergo random alcohol tests.
The case is being tried in the 144th District Court, Judge Michael Mery presiding. If convicted, Jones faces up to 20 years in prison on the second-degree felony.