A St. Petersburg sanitation worker who hit and killed a woman after picking up a dumpster in a downtown alley last weekend did not see the woman and did not know he hit her, according to one of his defense attorneys.
Nathan D. Brown, 51, was arrested Saturday on a charge of leaving the scene of a crash involving death, hours after hitting and killing Candice Roberts, 49, in an alley off Third Street North. Police say Brown hit Roberts once while backing into the alley and again on the way out.
“The reality is my client had no idea there was someone essentially sleeping in the road,” attorney Lee Pearlman told the Tampa Bay Times in a phone interview Wednesday. “These are big trucks. He did not know he ran over a human being by any stretch.”
Brown arrived about 6:30 a.m. to the alley between Central and First avenues, behind Jannus Live, in a 2019 Kenworth truck to pick up a dumpster, according to arrest reports. A delivery driver warned Brown that people were sleeping in the alley, and Brown also told police later that he saw people sleeping there, the reports state.
Brown backed the truck east down the alley about 10 yards, hitting Roberts a first time, then continued another 90 yards to the end of the alley and hooked up the dumpster, a report states. As he drove west to exit onto Third Street, he hit Roberts a second time, then left without helping the woman or providing his information, the reports say.
One of the reports states that Roberts was “lying perpendicular in the alley and was in clear visual line of sight from the end of the alley,” and that Brown had “a clear and unobstructed view of the victim lying on the ground.”
Based on those facts, Brown “had actual knowledge that the crash occurred” and “should have known from the totality of the circumstances that the victim sustained injury or death,” a report states.
“I think that’s an opinion not grounded in fact or merit,” Pearlman said.
After the warning from the delivery driver, Brown saw two people in an area of the narrow alley where people typically sleep, but he didn’t see a third person, Pearlman said.
“There was a point where my client does get out of the truck, but it’s easily like 100 yards away from where the individual who was struck was,” he said. “There’s no way with the angles and the lighting you would have seen it, especially with all the debris out there.”
During Brown’s first appearance, an associate of Pearlman’s argued the first arrest affidavit filed by the St. Petersburg Police Department did not show probable cause, and a judge agreed, so police filed a second, more detailed affidavit, according to Pearlman.
Pearlman said he also disagreed with the agency’s decision to make an arrest in the case rather than work with the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney’s Office to do a more thorough investigation and then decide whether to file criminal charges. Pearlman said he’s grateful prosecutors appear to be working quickly to continue the investigation to make a filing decision.
“At the end of the day, they must prove beyond any reasonable doubt my client knew, and nothing in any of the evidence I’ve been able to see or been informed of indicates he had any knowledge whatsoever,” Pearlman said. “If you don’t have knowledge, if you don’t have intent, there’s no crime.”
Citing the ongoing investigation, a police spokesperson said the agency had no comment. Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bruce Bartlett did not immediately respond to a message Wednesday.
Brown was booked into the Pinellas County Jail and released Sunday after posting a $50,000 bond, records show. The charge is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in state prison.
Brown is sanitation specialist and has been with the city since 1997. He has been placed on paid administrative leave.
Pearlman said Brown, a married father who lives in St. Petersburg, would not have left and gone about his usual route if he’d known what happened.
“This is a very good man who is so sincere, and he’s so distraught about this,” Pearlman said.