Flames on Interstate 35

About 2 a.m. on 14 January 2003, on northbound Interstate 35 in Dallas, a black Mitsubishi hit the back of an eighteen-wheeler, crossed the lanes, struck the centre divider and caught fire. Three men stopped and got out to pull the unconscious driver from the flames. Dwayne Goodrich, a Dallas Cowboys cornerback and the club's top draft pick in 2000, came up the highway in his BMW, tried to pass between the burning Mitsubishi and the divider, struck the Mitsubishi and ploughed into the three rescuers. Joseph Wood, 21, and Demont Matthews, 23, were killed; Shuki Josef, 41, suffered a shattered leg. Goodrich did not stop. He turned himself in the next day. A grand jury indicted him for manslaughter on the theory of reckless conduct causing death. An accident-reconstruction expert put the BMW at between 54 and 80 mph when it hit the men; a witness said it had come up behind her at over 100 mph; Goodrich testified he was doing about 75. His lawyers argued the men were standing in a dark lane on a freeway and that he reacted to a sudden emergency; he asked the jury to be told about necessity and mistake of fact. The jury had to choose between manslaughter, the lesser offence of criminally negligent homicide, or nothing at all.