2nd jury deadlocks in fatality

CALDWELL, Idaho – A second Canyon County jury has declared itself unable to reach a verdict in the case of a Middleton driver accused of causing the death of a 31-year-old Nampa mother last year.

Jurors said they were deadlocked after 4 1/2 hours of deliberations Friday.

It was the second mistrial for Jose Manual Aguila, 27, charged with vehicular manslaughter in the traffic death of Corey Wilson, 31, of Nampa.

Wilson died Aug. 3, 2004, during a chain-reaction collision that investigators said was triggered by Aguila’s failure to pull his disabled truck to the side of westbound Interstate 84. Instead he left the vehicle, with its lights out, in a traffic lane of the freeway.

Marco A. Andrade-Prado, 41, of Boise came across the pickup and tried to swerve around it. His vehicle clipped the back of the stalled truck and then rolled into the median.

Debris from that collision struck another passing car, Idaho State Police said.

Wilson, also westbound, saw the accident. She pulled over and parked, and then got out and ran toward Andrade-Prado’s truck. At the same time, Liza Marie Ferreyra, 20, of Nampa swerved to avoid debris and apparently lost control of her car, which struck and killed Wilson.

After a judge declared a mistrial at the first trial, in June, prosecutors immediately refiled their case against Aguila. Prosecutors have not decided whether to try a third time.

Closing arguments Friday resembled those at the first trial.

Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Charles Craft argued that Aguila showed gross negligence when he failed to turn the truck lights on and failed to coast his stalled vehicle off the freeway.

“This was a game of Russian roulette,” Craft told the jury. “The pickup was the gun and Mr. Aguila was the bullet.”

Aguila’s attorney, Alex Briggs, said prosecutors were singling out his client for blame in Wilson’s death even though other drivers were involved.

He noted, as he did at the first trial, that Ferreyra was talking to her mother on a hands-free cell phone when she had to quickly hang up and swerve to miss Aguila’s unlighted truck. She then overcorrected, sending her vehicle into the median where it struck Wilson.

No charges were filed against Ferreyra, he noted.

Craft told the jury that Ferreyra’s role in the death was “minuscule” compared to Aguila’s. And she broke no law by talking on her cell phone while driving, he said.

“This was not her fault,” Craft said. “She did not cause this accident. He did.”