Man driving truck that dropped stove on Anaheim freeway, killing a deputy, is set free
A Long Beach man convicted of killing an off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy by accidentally dropping a stolen stove onto a busy freeway has been released from prison.
Cole Wilkins served 13 years of a 16-year-to-life sentence for the fatal accident in July 2006 on the 91 Freeway in Anaheim. He was driving with unsecured stolen kitchen appliances in the back of his truck when the stove fell onto the roadway. Off-duty sheriff’s Deputy David Piquette, 34, died in a traffic collision with a cement truck while swerving to avoid the stove in the early morning darkness.
In January, a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana ruled that Wilkins’ actions did not contain the implied malice needed to qualify for a second-degree murder conviction and changed it to manslaughter, which carries a reduced sentence.
On Tuesday, March 10, at the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach, Wilkins was resentenced to four years for manslaughter, after having served more than three times that length. He was released from prison Friday, but the court proceedings before Judge Gregg Prickett made it official.
In previous court appearances, Wilkins wore the orange jumpsuit of a jail inmate. This time he wore a black button-down shirt and gray slacks.
Prickett ordered that Wilkins report to parole authorities. His excess credits for serving so much time can apply to his parole period.
“It’s a great outcome and I think it’s the right (one) from the start,” his attorney, Orange County Deputy Public Defender Sara Ross, said after the proceedings.
It took only a matter of minutes for the judge to issue the new sentence. Wilkins did not make any statements. No one from the victim’s family was present. Ross acknowledged the hurdles during the case, one of which was showing that a California Highway Patrol supervisor rewrote incident reports to favor the prosecution.
‘He’s relieved’
She said Wilkins was happy the ordeal was over. “He’s relieved,” she said.
The case gained statewide attention after it was discovered the CHP supervisor shredded a field report that blamed the victim for the accident and rewrote the document. Deputy District Attorney Michael Murray, now an Orange County Superior Court judge, learned of the altered report but said nothing, causing another judge to conclude he committed “serious misconduct.”
Wilkins had stolen large kitchen appliances from a house under construction in Riverside County and driven about 60 miles when the boxed stove fell out of his truck about 5 a.m. Wilkins didn’t know the stove was gone and kept driving until an angry motorist directed him to pull over miles away.
Other drivers safely swerved to miss the stove. But Piquette, on his way to work, collided with a cement truck and was killed. The original report on the incident indicated Piquette’s driving was the primary cause of the accident. The report was destroyed and rewritten by a supervisor to reverse that conclusion.
Originally convicted of first-degree murder
Piquette’s death was mourned by the community and his brethren in law enforcement, who said the death qualified for murder charges because it occurred in the commission of a felony.
Wilkins originally was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 26 years to life in prison, but the conviction was overturned by the state Supreme Court because of faulty jury instructions. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office attempted to retry Wilkins on the same charge, but it was reduced to second-degree murder by Judge Thomas Goethals, who issued a term of 16 years to life. That judgment later was reduced by the appellate court to involuntary manslaughter.