South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Jury acquits man suspected of killing friend while street racing
For four long years, the aspiring Marine waited to go to trial on accusations that he killed his passenger while drag racing. The possibility of
15 years in prison hung over his head.
On Friday, Jeremy Bacchus regained control over his own destiny. After a two-week trial in Broward Circuit Court, a jury found the
24-year-old Tamarac man not guilty of vehicular homicide.
“It’s still very difficult for me to talk about,” Bacchus said in a telephone interview Friday. “It was a big tragic accident.”
Prosecutors argued that Bacchus sped 30 mph over the speed limit in his 2011 Hyundai Genesis while racing a motorcycle along Northwest
108th Terrace on Nov. 15, 2014. Bacchus lost control, they said, wrapped his car around a tree and killed his 20-year-old passenger, Paola Borja, of Plantation.
The posted speed limit was 35 mph.
A witness who lived less than one tenth of a mile from the crash site told police he heard the racing, revving vehicles — one sounded like a motorcycle — pass by about five times.
“The state was trying to turn an accident into a crime,” Bacchus’ defense attorney, Eric Schwartzreich, said outside of court.
There was no street racing, Schwartzreich told the jury, but there were sprinklers and a wet stretch of roadway. Now Jeremy Bacchus, 24, middle, is seated with his defense team, Nikki Ippolito-Laurie and Eric Schwartreich.
“My client encountered an unexpected hazard, went into a skid and hit a tree,” he said. “The evidence never supported [drag racing]. There were no eye witnesses, only ear witnesses.”
In the run up to trial, Bacchus declined a plea bargain that called for nine years in prison, Schwartzreich said.
Had Bacchus been convicted as charged, he faced a maximum punishment of 15 years behind bars.
“We gave all the evidence to the jury,” Assistant State Attorney Ross Weiner said. “It sounds like they found some reasonable doubt, and we respect their verdict.”
“It’s been very hurtful; it’s been very sad,” Bacchus said of the ordeal. “Obviously, I’m mourning my friend; she was a good friend of mine.”
In the days immediately after
Borja’s death, mourners expressed their sorrows in an online condolences page.
Among them was a tribute from a girl who called Borja “my best friend, my sister, my partner in crime, and the one I could talk to about everything and anything.”
Bacchus, whose brother was a Marine, put his military career on hold while the case played out.
He spent the past four years studying at Broward College’s Aviation Institute and working as an aviation inspector.
“Now that this is over, I’m hopeful that I can go ahead and join the Marine Corps and go ahead and serve my country like my original plans,” Bacchus told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.