Riverview man accused in DUI deaths faces more charges

For more than 20 minutes Monday, police searched for a marauding driver before learning he had crashed into two women's cars, killing both of them.

Tampa police had issued be-on-the-lookout alerts for the sport-utility vehicle Randy Archiquette was driving about 3:35 p.m. Monday after motorists in east Tampa reported he had rear-ended a tractor-trailer and sideswiped a car, then driven away.

At 3:59 p.m., police received another 911 call: The vehicle had crashed into two more cars and was on Florida Avenue near Hillsborough Avenue.

The drivers of the cars that were hit _ Betty Williams, 69, and Brittany McFarland, 20, both of Tampa _ were killed.

Archiquette, 39, of Riverview, is charged with felony DUI manslaughter and felony vehicular homicide related to the women's deaths.

Late Tuesday, authorities filed five additional misdemeanor charges of driving under the influence with property damage and leaving the scene of a crash involving property damage. The misdemeanors are related to Monday's earlier crashes on Adamo Drive.

Archiquette is being held without bail at least until Friday, when a judge will revisit the bail issue.

"The accidents started very minor and wound up deadly," police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said today.

Davis said all city patrol units and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office had received the alert about the hit-and-run driver, but the vehicle was hard to track.

"It's very difficult to find a moving target at a high rate of speed," she said.

She likened the situation to the 911 call police took in September from a motorist trailing a driver slumped behind the wheel of a Honda northbound on Bayshore Boulevard and into downtown Tampa. Police tried to locate the car but were unable to find it before the driver, Cheryl Maria Riemann, 26, of Ruskin, wound up driving the wrong way on the Selmon Crosstown Expressway.

Riemann's car crashed head-on into another vehicle, killing Jennifer O'Boyle and injuring her daughter, Summer Moll, now 5. Riemann is awaiting trial on DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide charges.

In Monday's situation, one motorist had called in a license tag number in reference to the earlier crashes, which helped in issuing the alert, Davis said.

However, that motorist broke off from following Archiquette's vehicle because the other driver's erratic behavior caused him to fear for his own safety. At that point, police did not have a clear direction of Archiquette's travel, she said.

When the motorists from the earlier crashes learned the same driver was involved with the fatal wrecks, they told detectives they felt sick to their stomachs, Davis said.

Police told them there was only so much they could do. "If they had chased him, their lives would have been in jeopardy as well," she said.

Detectives still are reviewing 911 calls from Monday for evidence, she said.

Police received the first 911 call about Archiquette's 2007 Chevrolet Yukon about 3:31 p.m., when a witness reported an SUV westbound on Adamo Drive had rear-ended a tractor-trailer about North 28th Street.

Another witness phoned about the same crash, saying the SUV had pulled into the IKEA parking lot, turned around and headed east on Adamo, Davis said.

At 3:35 p.m., police then received a 911 call about another crash involving what appeared to be the same vehicle, this time at North 39th Street and Adamo Drive. This time, the SUV had sideswiped a Crown Victoria, Davis said.

With witnesses supplying the license tag and a description of the SUV, police issued the alert to patrol units and the sheriff's office.

There was no sign of the vehicle until about 3:59 p.m., when a driver called 911 after seeing the Yukon rear-end Williams' 1994 Geo, forcing it into a pole. The same caller then saw the Yukon veer into oncoming traffic and strike McFarland's Buick head-on, forcing the Buick into another vehicle.

The Yukon flipped and landed on its roof a block north of Mohawk Avenue. Archiquette suffered minor injuries, police said.