Man faces up to 8 years in highway worker’s death

A 31-year-old Madison County man could be sent to prison for as long as eight years after being found guilty Thursday of killing a highway worker while driving drunk through a construction zone on the Far West Side.

Edward A. Torres, of South Solon, entered an Alford plea to charges of aggravated vehicular homicide and driving while intoxicated in the Sept. 30 death of 59-yearold Steve L. Cook.

In an Alford plea, a defendant professes innocence but concedes that the state has sufficient evidence to get a conviction.

A conviction for aggravated vehicular homicide while intoxicated carries a mandatory prison sentence and a lifetime driver’s license suspension. Torres will be sentenced May 2 by Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Charles Schneider. The judge revoked Torres’ bond and ordered him jailed until sentencing.

Torres was driving east on Interstate 70 at 1:35 a.m., approaching Hilliard-Rome Road, when he drove around barricades and into a construction zone where three right lanes were closed to traffic, Assistant Prosecutor Dan Cable said.

He continued driving his 2009 Honda Odyssey past a Franklin County Sheriff’s Office cruiser that had emergency lights activated. When Torres encountered a large pavement roller in the middle of the three lanes, he swerved into the far right lane, where Cook was standing.

Torres told officers that he had glanced down at his cellphone just before his minivan struck the worker.

Cook, of Barnesville in Belmont County, died at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center.

Torres had an open container of alcohol in a cup holder and told officers that he’d “had a few beers,” Cable said. A blood test determined that Torres had a blood-alcohol content of 0.19 percent, he said, more than twice the level at which a driver is presumed to be impaired.