George Russell Weller told police he had no idea how the car he was driving accelerated through a crowded farmers market in Santa Monica more than three years ago.
Nor, Weller said within an hour of the incident, did he know how his car came to a stop after leaving nearly 1,000 feet of carnage, 10 people dead and more than 60 injuries in its wake.
Weller spoke of the "poor people" who died and his "contribution" to their deaths, and mused on divine purpose in an interview with police that day, July 16, 2003. He tried repeatedly to describe what happened, grasping for any explanation that made sense.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury is to be chosen, beginning Tuesday, to decide whether Weller, who learned to drive on a Ford Model T, committed a crime or just played an unfortunate role in a tragedy.
He is charged with 10 counts of manslaughter. If convicted, Weller, 89, would become one of the oldest of the 161,000 inmates in the California prison system. (The oldest is 93, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.)
Jurors must draw the sort of fine distinctions between carelessness and recklessness that have bedeviled such panels for centuries. But they probably will do so without hearing from Weller, who has refused to testify in civil lawsuits filed by the injured and survivors of the deceased, citing his 5th Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
That leaves what Weller said three years ago.
In the police interrogation, contained in 43 pages of transcripts obtained last week by The Times, Weller sounded contrite, bewildered -- and uncomprehending.
He lamented not taking his wife's advice. Their niece was to be married in San Diego that weekend, and he wanted to make sure that she received their written congratulations. Weller told officers he had rejected his wife's suggestion that he hand the envelope to their letter carrier.
"If I had listened to her and given it to Earnie and gone back in and sat down by the couch and minded my own damn business, I would have never been there...."
He seemed to marvel at what he saw as the innocent beginning of that deadly day. He mailed the letter at the post office at Arizona Avenue and 4th Street and took a wrong turn toward the farmers market.
"How do you figure that a single thing like that would be a precursor to all of the agony that I brought to people?"
