Opinion
B165627.
10-31-2002
THE PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. DANNY ZAVALA, Defendant and Appellant.
California Appellate Project, Jonathan B. Steiner and Richard L. Fitzer, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant. Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Robert R. Anderson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Susan D. Martynec and Susan Lee Frierson, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
A jury convicted defendant of the felony of evading a police officer and the misdemeanor of hit and run. Defendant attacks only the misdemeanor, claiming insufficient evidence supported the charge. Instead, he says, the evidence supported only an attempted hit and run.
Defendants claim means we "must review the whole record in the light most favorable to the judgment below to determine whether it discloses substantial evidence — that is, evidence which is reasonable, credible, and of solid value — such that a reasonable trier of fact could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." (People v. Johnson (1980) 26 Cal.3d 557, 578.)
Defendant, with a 16-year-old female passenger, ran a stop sign. Officers on patrol saw the infraction and gave chase. Defendant ran at least five more stop signs and one red light. The passenger continually implored him to stop. After a near-collision, defendant collided with two parked vehicles. Apparently temporarily unconscious, defendant awoke and staggered from the car. When officers ordered him to put his hands on his head, he ran stumblingly from the scene, going up some stairs and through a driveway to the back of an apartment building. There, he fell to the ground, some 80 feet from the vehicle he had crashed about two minutes before.
Vehicle Code section 20002 required defendant to "immediately" locate and notify the owners of the vehicles he had hit or leave a written notice identifying himself and telling what had happened. Defendant says the evidence failed to establish a violation of this "immediacy requirement" and that his 80-foot journey constituted only an attempt to flee the scene.
Defendant relies on Karl v. C. A. Reed Lumber Co. (1969) 275 Cal.App.2d 358. There, a small car collided with the rear end of a tractor-trailer rig. The tractor driver felt a jolt, thought his load had shifted, drove on for six-tenths of a mile, inspected the truck, realized he had been in an accident, but did not return to the scene of the accident. The appellate court found that this evidence of failure to comply with Vehicle Code requirements was "not overwhelming," but was sufficient. (Id. at p. 362.)
Defendant argues that if six-tenths of a mile was not overwhelming, 80 feet is insufficient. We disagree with the argument and reject the reliance on Karl. The Karl drivers violation occurred not when he drove from the scene of the undetected accident, but when he later inspected his rig and decided to move on. He violated the Vehicle Code well before he drove 80 feet from the site of his inspection.
As respondent points out, the evidence showed that defendant was not "running to find the owners of the two cars he had hit to [give] them . . . his name and address . . . ." The Vehicle Code required him to "immediately" comply. Instead, defendant chose to try to escape from the police. The evidence supported the hit and run conviction.
DISPOSITION
The judgment is affirmed.
We concur: SPENCER, P.J. and MALLANO, J.