The narrative from the Arkansas State Police is matter of fact, as only a police report can be.
“Trevor Ware was traveling on his motorcycle in the No. 2 lane of Interstate 40 East when he was struck in the rear by Nathan Ray. Ware’s motorcycle became stuck on Ray’s bumper and was pushed approximately 340 feet from the point of impact. Ware was thrown from the motorcycle and struck the windshield of Ray’s vehicle before falling into the No. 2 lane. Ray continued traveling east with the motorcycle attached to his front bumper before taking the [JFK Boulevard] exit. The motorcycle became dislodged from Ray’s vehicle at the intersection of [A Avenue and North Pine Street in North Little Rock], approximately 1.4 miles east of the point of impact.”
The time was shortly after 1 a.m. on Sept. 4, 2012. The Tuesday after Labor Day. The then 28-year-old Trevor was returning to his downtown Little Rock home after spending the evening with his girlfriend Felicia Fox in Conway. Where the 28-year-old Ray was coming from or where he was going hasn’t come out yet.
Trevor was riding his orange, 1974 Honda CB550K motorcycle in the center lane of the three-lane interstate, just short of where 40 bridges MacArthur Drive. Conditions were clear. The road surface was dry. The interstate was straight. At 1:08 a.m., Ray, driving his father’s beige, 2004 Mercedes-Benz E350, rear-ended the motorcycle, knocking Trevor, who was not wearing a helmet, to the interstate. Trevor landed in the middle of the road with internal injuries and an incapacitating traumatic brain injury; Ray’s airbag never deployed.
Arkansas State Police trooper Matthew Talley, the author of the collision report’s narrative, states he arrived on the scene at 1:25 a.m. where paramedics were already treating Trevor, who was still lying in the center lane of the interstate. A witness soon reported observing Ray’s car pushing Trevor’s motorcycle along A Avenue. The witness says Ray stopped, got out of his car, looked at the motorcycle, got back into his car and then continued on A Avenue, leaving Trevor’s motorcycle in the middle of the quiet residential street in Park Hill. The witness copied down the car’s personalized plate: the name of Ray’s mother.
Following his scene investigation, Talley went first to Park Hill while North Little Rock police officers, using information from the Mercedes-Benz’s tag, contacted Ray’s father, Michael, at his Chimney Rock Drive address in North Little Rock. The elder Ray directed cops to his son’s house in Lakeview. North Little Rock cops were soon at Ray’s residence followed by Talley, and Ray was read his rights and taken into custody for aggravated assault and felony leaving the scene with personal injury.
“[Nathan Ray] would not admit to anything other than consuming alcohol earlier in the evening,” Talley’s narrative reads. During a consented search of the house, Talley discovered a camouflage T-shirt with blood stains on it in Ray’s laundry room. Strands of Trevor’s hair were removed from the Mercedes-Benz’s windshield. The T-shirt, the strands of hair and a blood sample from Ray were all sent to the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory.
Five months later, Trevor is living with the effects of his traumatic brain injury. Ray is in the Pulaski County Jail, awaiting trial on felony charges of first-degree battery and leaving the scene of an accident with injury or death, and a misdemeanor suspended license charge.
But it’s not the first time Ray hurt someone while driving a vehicle. And the first time resulted in death.
THE THREE-YEAR-OLD PHOTOGRAPH is one that, if your memories don’t possess one similar, you wish they did. The snapshot looks so damn cool. Trevor is relaxing against his Honda motorcycle on the side of the highway in northeastern Arizona. The location is the edge of the famed Monument Valley. You know what it looks like. Think of a John Ford Western starring John Wayne. Agatha Peak rises from the desert in the background. The lowering sun in the west glints off the Honda’s gas tank and sparks off the motorcycle’s chrome.
Trevor’s dressed in tight black jeans and a brown leather jacket. He’s got a red bandana pulled up over his nose and mouth, and his rumpled hair hangs down over his right eye. His right hand, covered in a black glove, rests on his hip. His left hand, uncovered, is on his Honda’s gas tank. Trevor’s body language conveys happiness. Young and free and so on.
The snapshot was taken by Trevor’s friend Jordan Trotter. The pair play music in Little Rock’s indie rock quartet Grand Serenade, and in the fall of 2009 Trotter and Trevor, riding a rebuilt motorcycle that he’d paid $965 for in Iowa earlier in the year, headed west. The plan was for the duo to gather friend and fellow Grand Serenade bandmate Justin Seymore, who was living in Los Angeles, and ride on. Outside of Los Angeles though, Trotter’s bike broke down. He turned back. Seymore and Trevor carried on, visiting San Francisco and Yosemite National Park on the trip. The ride was the first of several, Seymore says. “It was like, me and him, on the motorcycle trips.” Seymore rides a 2005 Triumph Bonneville motorcycle and in the last few years Seymore and Trevor visited the national parks of the Southwest, rode around Lake Michigan and into Canada, and drove the Natchez Trace.
Last fall, Trevor was scheduling a trip up into New England.
Trevor’s mom, Pam Ware, says her father had a Harley-Davidson, so perhaps that’s where Trevor’s love of motorcycles comes from. The freedom of the road also matches his personality. “He’s the person who walks in and just lights up the room,” she says of her son. “It sounds kind of corny, but it’s really true with him. He draws people to him. He’s hilariously funny. Very independent. Kind of a free spirit.”
Trevor was born Nov. 27, 1983, in California. Shortly after turning 4, Trevor’s 30-year-old dad died in an oil field accident outside of Bakersfield. A polished rod struck him. He died of massive head injuries. At 10, Trevor moved to Heber Springs. That’s where he met Seymore. The boy from California moved in next door, and the two were soon best friends. Trevor met Trotter and Kyle Mays, and by high school, the four had formed a band — first called The Benders, and then Grand Serenade.
Trevor also met his girlfriend of 11 years, Fox, while in Heber Springs. Their meeting is a fairy-tale type deal. The event was the Heber Springs High School homecoming dance. Trevor was a junior; Fox was a freshman. “He asked me to dance,” Fox says. “We hit it off. I just thought he was so cute and funny, and he skateboarded and played the bass.” The two have been together ever since.
The bass — that’s Trevor’s instrument. That’s what he plays in Grand Serenade. He’s played bass with Big Boots and the Elise Davis Band, too, but Trevor’s bass playing started in the bedroom of his mom’s house.
His grandfather played the bass, and Pam bought Trevor a bass for his 16th birthday. She allowed the boys to practice in her house, and “they were actually decent,” she says. Pam’s a ‘70s rock kind of music fan, and Trevor listened to a lot of it — Heart and Queen and the like — along with other artists, bands from Nirvana to Johnny Cash.
Trevor graduated high school in 2003. He was a half-credit short of graduation in 2002 because he wrote a term paper about The Beatles changing music when the teacher said it was not an acceptable topic. Trevor was voted class clown two years in a row.
Fox graduated in 2004 and headed off to colleges in California and New York City. Trevor moved to Little Rock, into a house at the corner of Cumberland Street and Daisy Bates Drive. He worked for RTN in Little Rock and made music with his friends in Grand Serenade. The indie rock quartet released their debut album, Lean Times, in 2007, and an EP a few years later. Played gigs. No one got rich.
In early 2008, Trevor told Fox he was getting a motorcycle. She remembers saying, “‘You’re crazy. You don’t know anything about this.’ It was so random.” But the choice fits his personality “to a T.” Trevor’s motorcycle was named Dee Dee. When it was stolen, he and Fox went to Austin, Texas, and bought another Honda exactly like Dee Dee. It had become a part of Trevor’s life for he and his friends to travel the U.S. on their motorcycles.
Arkansas has no helmet law, but Trevor sometimes wore a helmet in Arkansas. Helmet or no-helmet depended on Trevor’s surroundings. He always followed the helmet law in other states. “He was very conscious of what could happen and what couldn’t happen,” Fox says. “It just came down to that it was his decision.”
FOX MOVED BACK TO ARKANSAS in August 2009. Pam moved to Montrose, Colo., in October 2011. By the late summer of 2012, Fox was living in Conway, working at Hewlett-Packard. She’d just moved into a new place. On Labor Day, Fox’s parents were over helping her decorate, and Trevor fixed her washer and dryer and hung curtain rods. Fox cooked roasted chicken and vegetables for dinner and made peanut butter cookies. The couple watched Cash Cab. A mini-date is what Fox calls it, and Trevor even wore a brand-new pair of jeans. “He looked so cute. It was a low-key, typical night for us.”
The Tuesday morning after Labor Day, Pam headed to work in Montrose. She was living there with Trevor’s younger brother Tyler, who has autism, and they and her boyfriend had just returned from a weekend camping trip. Heading toward work a Montrose County sheriff’s truck passed her. Minutes later she got a phone call from her boyfriend: Come back home. Details were sketchy. Hit and run. Head injury. Trevor’s identification had been misplaced so there was a delay in alerting Pam. She called Fox, who knew something was wrong as soon as she saw Pam’s number at 8 a.m. Fox sat in rush-hour traffic on her way to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences where Trevor had been admitted. Pam grabbed a bag of clothes, got in her vehicle and drove 18 hours straight to Little Rock, avoiding the wait of airports and connections. She arrived in the early morning hours of Wednesday.
“Those first few days, maybe that week, are a blur to me except for the first time I went in and saw him,” Fox says.
Not long after arriving at UAMS, Pam was told some details of the wreck. White-hot, burning anger is how she describes her feelings. “To know he was left ... in the middle lane,” she says. “To know the person just left him there and kept driving. Didn’t call 911. Didn’t stop and offer aid. Simply drove home and went to bed. I was so angry.” Still, the concern was for Trevor. He’d suffered a closed traumatic brain injury and punctured bowel along with severe road rash. He was in the intensive-care unit for 10 days. And Pam and Fox, with support from family members and friends, navigated the world of the ICU, staring at monitors and living out of the hospital. “It’s a world that just swallows you up,” Pam says. “You live day to day to just see what they are going to tell you the next day.”
Trevor was in a completely unresponsive coma for two weeks. He opened his eyes after two weeks but didn’t say his first words until a month after the wreck. After six weeks at UAMS, Trevor, who didn’t have health insurance, was released from the hospital. Pam and Fox took care of him at home, but in December Trevor returned to the hospital to have the bone flap on his skull replaced. He spent three weeks at Baptist Health undergoing rehabilitation, and was then transferred to Timber Ridge, a brain injury rehabilitation center in Benton. Timber Ridge is Trevor’s home right now, with daily physical and occupational therapy.
Up until the December surgery, Trevor had already accrued some $260,000 in medical bills. There are no hard figures for the cost of his future medical care.
“What type of work can he go back to?” Pam says. “He’s a bass player and a mechanic. He doesn’t have use of his left hand right now, and we’re not sure how that is going to be resolved. It’s frustrating having bills coming in the mail in his name, and they are all piling up in his name. Right now it’s on him. We do have Medicaid pending. It’ll carry some of that. We’re looking at what we’ll have available to take care of him long term.”
WHAT ABOUT NATHAN RAY? His criminal defense attorney, Jack T. Lassiter, replied to an email seeking comment from either himself, Ray, a member of Ray’s family or a family spokesman by stating, “As usual I will not comment on a pending criminal case. I hope Mr. Ware is progressing well in his rehab.”
Ray was born June 4, 1984, but his history is easier told through court records, including several arrests for drinking and driving, one resulting in death. According to records from Indiana’s Marion County, Ray was arrested in May 2005 in Indianapolis and charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated causing death. The Marion County Sheriff’s Department’s report details that Ray, then 20, was the driver of a black 2002 Mercedes-Benz near Castleton Square, a mall northeast of downtown Indianapolis, that collided with a utility pole, ejecting Ray’s passenger, 21-year-old Brian Jackson. Jackson died at the scene. Ray admitted at the scene that he had been at a local bar beforehand, and witnesses reported Ray “was in a speed contest” with another car at the time of the crash. The report also states Ray had a prior drinking and driving conviction in Hamilton County, Ind., from a late 2004 arrest.
Ray was found guilty of operating a vehicle while intoxicated causing death in the case, but a criminal history search shows Ray was arrested again in 2005 by the Marion County Sheriff’s Department for operating a vehicle while intoxicated along with other charges, including having a blood-alcohol content of greater than .15 when arrested. Ray served less than three years for these crimes. In July 2011, Ray was arrested by the Indianapolis Metro Police Department for theft and receiving stolen property. Again Ray went to prison, but he was released and his parole was transferred to Arkansas in April 2012.
On July 24, 2012, Ray, by this time living in North Little Rock, was arrested by the North Little Rock Police Department and charged with driving while intoxicated, unsafe driving and other charges. The report states that Ray, driving a gray, 2009 Nissan Altima, was traveling westbound on East 13th Street near North Vine Street around 5:50 p.m. when he left the road and struck a utility pole. Ray refused a breath test at the scene of the wreck.
An official with the Indianapolis Parole Office stated Indiana was not notified of any parole violation by Ray until three days after the September wreck involving Ray and Trevor, and a warrant for Ray was issued Sept. 14, 2012. The Indiana warrant has since been lifted and voided because he’s incarcerated in Arkansas.
Pam views Ray’s past criminal offenses and what happened to her son and has one response: “This should never have happened.
“The circumstances of it are so disgusting that I don’t know why there’s not more outrage. There are just so many reasons why it shouldn’t have happened that night. So many questions.”
What’s certain? Pam and Fox don’t want Ray plea bargaining out of his current charges. “We know it’s not a legal right for people to get plea bargains so we’ve tried really hard to let our feelings be known,” Pam says.
“I hope it goes to trial,” Fox adds. “I want Nathan to have to turn around and walk through those doors of a courtroom packed with Trevor’s friends and family and acquaintances.”
Pam and Trevor Ware filed a civil suit in November 2012 against Ray and his parents claiming negligence while operating a motor vehicle and stating Ray has an “extensive history of motor vehicle violations including ... multiple charges and convictions for driving under the influence and causing death while operating a motor vehicle under the influence.” The civil suit asks for compensatory damages and punitive damages. Via court documents, both Ray and his parents have denied the allegations listed in the civil complaint.
PAM AND FOX ARE OVERWHELMED by the support of family members, friends and total strangers when it comes to Trevor. White Water Tavern, where Trevor played often with Grand Serenade, has already hosted two benefits organized by friends. An online Trevor Ware Hospital Fund has raised some $12,400. But they don’t want people forgetting about Trevor. He needs continuous thoughts and prayers. He needs friendship. Visits. A long road is still ahead.
Traumatic brain injuries are different with each person, and Pam says doctors have told her that “there’s no way to give a really good prognosis other than we have to wait and see what time does.”
The way Trevor’s brain communicates was damaged. His health, age and artistic personality are helping with his recovery. Still, time is what it takes. Over the last five months, Trevor has made steady progress from his comatose state. He has short-term memory issues. The left side of his body has mobility issues. He talks but can’t walk. Still, Pam says his healing “has been better than expected. Initially his prognosis was poor because he didn’t wake up right away and didn’t respond.”
Fox shows an iPhone video of Trevor taken the last weekend of January. His hair is slowly growing back from the surgeries. And his speech, although slow and fragmented, is there. In the short video, he requests Fox’s mom come visit him next week. Then Fox kisses Trevor on the side of his head.
After not showing emotion for a while following the wreck, Trevor has started crying, and he laughed for the first time during the last week of January. A real laugh, Fox says. Not a “ha-ha” laugh. And Trevor, a doodler, has also started drawing again.
“He’s slowly starting to be like Trevor,” Pam says. “Like everything else he’s ever done, he’s just been impressive. We’re just really proud of him. He’s really fighting hard.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less of him,” Fox adds.
The goal in the coming months is home care with daily therapy. Right now, Fox is, she jokes, living “every girl’s dream, living with her quote-unquote mother-in-law.” Marriage is on the horizon for Trevor and Felicia. Right now, though, the future is getting Trevor better. He’s coming along, bit by bit.