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DNA Clears Woman In 2006 Fatal Crash, Implicates Boyfriend

Pinellas County Sheriff's Office

Leyana Rich spent two years behind bars awaiting charges in the Feb. 2, 2006, crash that killed a cab driver, but DNA tests have convinced officials that it was her boyfriend Luke Irons who was driving at the time.

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 14, 2009

ST. PETERSBURG - When ambulance crews rolled up on the aftermath of a violent car wreck nearly three years ago, they found taxi driver John Kelly dead, his body partially ejected from his cab.

In the other car, a Ford Taurus, they found Leyana M. Rich, then 18, behind the wheel. Rich was charged with vehicular homicide because, among other things, the Ford Taurus was fleeing from police and had just run a stop sign before it smashed into Kelly's cab, court documents show.

Now, after Rich spent a considerable amount of time in jail awaiting trial, prosecutors say she wasn't driving after all. The blood on the driver's side airbag wasn't hers, but that of her boyfriend, two separate experts have concluded.

Last month, the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office dropped the vehicular homicide charge against Rich. Now, prosecutors are charging the boyfriend, Luke Irons, who was also 18 at the time of the Feb. 2, 2006, wreck, but who was nowhere to be found when those paramedics arrived.

Irons is admitting he was the driver, even though he claimed after the wreck that Rich was and then said he couldn't remember, according to court documents and prosecutors. Irons' admission came after he was sentenced to 30 years in prison last year after a string of crimes in Hendry County.

"We were operating under the premise she was the driver," said Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett. "Once our expert was of the opinion she was not driving and he was – and now you had the guy confessing – it put us in the position where we couldn't go forward with it against her."

According to a deposition given by Irons, both he and Rich used and sold drugs, and their relationship was based on that common interest. Before the wreck, they had been at a drug house, someone tried to rob them and they took off in the Taurus, court documents say.

A police officer spotted the car and tried to pull it over, the documents say. The officer said he saw Rich behind the wheel, and someone in the passenger seat with a brown baseball cap.

That officer's observation, coupled with Rich being found behind the wheel after the 1:51 a.m. collision, led to the vehicular homicide charge, prosecutors and police say. She was also eventually charged with possession of marijuana and driving while her license was suspended or revoked.

Rich was booked into the Pinellas County Jail the morning of the wreck, and spent just one day shy of two years there before she posted $20,000 bond, according to computerized bail records. The charges were dropped Dec. 19.

After Rich claimed she wasn't the driver, her attorney, Geoffrey Cox, had DNA tests performed on several items in the car – including the air bags – to determine who was where. The results showed there was blood on the air bag on the driver's side, but it was Irons, not hers, even though Rich's mouth had been bloodied.

The state attorney's office then had its own expert perform tests on the airbag, and that expert found the same thing, said Doneene Dresback, the assistant state attorney in charge of the case.

Cox also found out something else. Through his research, he uncovered a Jan. 21, 2005 case in which Irons fled from police, ran a red light, then tried to run off before he was arrested, court documents say. He also said his passenger, Tony Cavan, was driving the car, a Saturn.

He had given the owner of the Saturn $150 plus three rocks of cocaine to use the car, much in the same way he had given a woman crack so he could use the Taurus which she had rented, the court documents said. A judge was going to allow Cox to use this information under certain conditions if the case went to trial.

In addition, Kaleena Conklin, the mother of Irons' daughter, said in a deposition he had told her what he did following the wreck involving the Taurus. He told Conklin he had pulled Rich into the passenger seat before he ran off, her deposition says. She also said Rich told her he was driving.

Dresback, the assistant state attorney, said Irons confessed only after he was hit with the heavy prison sentence. Because of his varying statements on the issue, prosecutors wanted to wait until they got their own DNA analysis exonerating Rich before they dropped the charges and went ahead with a case against Irons.

Prosecutors have filled out the paperwork for an arrest warrant charging him with a single crime – vehicular homicide with leaving the scene of an accident involving death. The maximum sentence is 30 years.

Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336 or spthompson@tampatrib.com.

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