Hit-and-run driver guilty of Little Rock pedestrian's death; gets fine, no jail

Kevin Linsley
Kevin Linsley

A 36-year-old Benton man was spared prison time Thursday for killing a developmentally disabled Little Rock pedestrian in a hit-and-run collision in 2015.

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A Pulaski County jury imposed a $6,000 fine instead of more severe penalties.

The eight women and four men deliberated about 70 minutes to find Kevin Linsley guilty of misdemeanor negligent homicide and felony failure to stop after an accident causing death. The jury deliberated about 20 minutes before deciding to impose the fine-only punishment on the married father of four.

Linsley could have been fined up to $11,000 and faced a maximum of six years in prison, but with no criminal record, he was also eligible for probation. He will be given an opportunity to pay the fine in installments.

One of the jurors paused to hug the victim's mother, Catherine Canham, after Circuit Judge Chris Piazza dismissed the jury. Canham and Linsley's wife also exchanged tearful hugs before the sentence was announced.

Ian Canham, her oldest son, was run over as he walked on the sidewalk in August 2015 on Rodney Parham Road near the Sturbridge Shopping Center. He was dragged 67 feet along the road, police said.

Police said the Linsley, turning right onto Rodney Parham from a Shell convenience store on Rodney Parham, struck Canham but didn't stop until Canham became dislodged from under the work van Linsley was driving. Canham had stopped at the store for snacks.

Parts of his skin were scraped from his body, a condition commonly called "road rash," and the medical examiner who performed the autopsy showed jurors photos of tire-tread-like marks across his right chest and down his arm. His collarbone, some ribs and his pelvis were also broken.

Canham died from skull fractures likely caused by the van tire, forensic pathologist Jennifer Forsyth told jurors Thursday.

Witness accounts led police to search for a white van from Lawn Doctor, the company where Linsley had worked as a technician for almost three years. Company officials, in turn, directed police to Linsley.

Defense attorney Clint Lancaster started his closing arguments by giving a box of tissues to Canham's weeping mother.

He called her son's death a "terrible accident" that everyone truly regretted.

But the man's death was not a crime, he said, urging jurors not to hold the man's tragic and painful death against his client, particularly after seeing graphic crime scene and autopsy photographs.

"All he did was turn right," Lancaster said. "He parked it [his van] out of the way and he stayed there until a police officer told him he could leave the scene. If a police officer tells you you can go then you can go."

On the day of his death, Canham, 29, was walking home after buying a video game at a Rodney Parham store for his brother's 20th birthday, which was two days away. A seizure disorder kept him from working or driving, and he'd had to scrimp to save up the $10 to pay for the game.

In closing arguments, deputy prosecutor Jennifer Corbin told jurors that Linsley killed Canham by violating one of the most basic laws of childhood, always look both ways before crossing the street.

That failure to look out for pedestrians on the sidewalk raised Canham's death from an accident to a criminal act, she told jurors.

"You look both ways. You take that responsibility more seriously when you become a driver," she said. "The defendant didn't look both ways. He didn't do what we've all been taught to do."

The last thing Canham did was try to let Linsley know he was in front of his van, she said.

"Ian reached out, touched the van trying to get Kevin Linsley's attention," Corbin told jurors, repeating the testimony of the only eyewitness to the accident.

By failing to abide by the law by not stopping to try to help Canham and by never identifying himself to police, Linsley further broke the law, Corbin said.

Senior deputy prosecutor Leigh Patterson played Linsley's 911 call for jurors to conclude the prosecution's closing arguments.

Linsley doesn't identify himself or his role in the crash on the recording, which lasts a little longer than a minute. But he can be heard stammering as he tells emergency dispatchers that a man has been struck on the road.

Asked what kind of vehicle had hit him, Linsley told them it was a van -- a statement prosecutors said was practically a confession.

Linsley briefly stopped in the street but then moved the van to to the shopping center parking lot, which overlooks where Canham ended up in the street. Police video shows the van on the lot, which is several feet up an embankment.

Patterson told jurors that Linsley had deliberately tried to throw off police by moving the van, describing him as "perching" above rescuers and watching them trying to save the injured man.

"He was hiding in plain sight," the prosecutor said. "[Police] didn't know he did it because he moved the van. We couldn't count on him to do the right thing. Now, it's your turn to do the right thing and that's hold him accountable by finding him guilty."

Linsley didn't testify until after jurors had found him guilty, but he briefly apologized before the sentencing.

Linsley never talked to investigators at the scene as the law requires, according to police testimony, and his only statement to law enforcement was a brief phone conversation with an officer in which Linsley denied seeing Canham until noticing the man's body in his rearview mirror.

Testifying in his defense were his father, James; mother Wanda; and wife of seven years, Katherine.

They told jurors that they'd overheard a phone call to Linsley on the day of the collision from police in which a detective said he had determined that police had dismissed Linsley from the crash scene.

The officer who testified during the first day of the trial had told jurors he never said that and that he had not found any officers who had spoken with Linsley.

Katherine Linsley also told jurors that the police video showed that her husband was standing on the curb near where passers-by and other motorists were trying to help Canham before the ambulance arrived.

Metro on 09/02/2016

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