Sep 20, 2006 6:45 pm US/Pacific
Jurors Hear Weller Testimony Via Video At Trial
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
George Russell Weller, the man whose car plowed through the Santa Monica farmers' market, killing 10 people, denied being involved in a fender-bender just before the tragedy, according to statement played for jurors Wednesday.
Prosecution witnesses have testified that George Russell Weller's car struck a Mercedes-Benz just before it accelerated, knocked over some sawhorses and plowed through the open-air market on Arizona Avenue next to the Third Street Promenade.
Weller said he tried everything he knew to stop his burgundy 1992 Buick LaSabre, which was headed west.
In a recorded interview with a Santa Monica police detective and a California Highway Patrol investigator hours after the accident on July 16, 2003, Weller was unable to explain why his car accelerated.
"The next thing I knew the car was accelerating, and I have no reason to know why," he said.
Weller, 86 at the time, said he "tried everything that you do to an automobile and tried to put on the foot brake, tried to take my foot off the gas.
"I tried to take the control knob and jam it into park. Everything, anything that I thought would stop the action of the car, I tried in that block, unsuccessfully. Maybe, maybe not, because it did come to a stop. I don't know what caused that," Weller said.
Weller, now 89, was not in the courtroom. Because of health problems, the judge is letting him skip most of the trial. He is charged with 10 counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence. Aside from those killed, 63 other people were injured.
Weller, who was in court for Deputy District Attorney Ann Ambrose opening statement on Sept. 12, faces up to 18 years in state prison if convicted of the charges.
In the recorded interview played for jurors today, Weller, a retired food broker, said he had "no idea how many people that I hit and how many people I hurt.
"But I'm deeply sorry for any pain that everyone went through. It was my fault," he said.
Weller said his wife asked him not to take out the car to go to the post office, but he went anyway, saying he wanted to make sure a letter to his great-niece, who was getting married in Del Mar that weekend, arrived on time.
"How do you figure that a simple thing like that would be a precursor to all of the agony that I brought people?" he asked.
Weller said he didn't know if his foot was on the accelerator.
"I'm not being capricious in my answer on that. The car was going, and if my foot was on the accelerator, it would have never ... I never, never drive at the speed that that thing accelerated to. And I went through that place, and God help the poor people that were in there," he said.
Weller said the vehicle itself may have accelerated on its own.
"It seems to me that it was the vehicle itself responding, because I sure as hell didn't have control over it. I was trying my best," he said.
When the car finally came to a stop -- with a body on the hood and one wedged underneath -- Weller said he met by an angry crowd. He said he was called a terrorist and other derogatory terms.
Attorneys on both sides have agreed that nothing wrong with the car or Weller.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
