Professor Denies Seeing Pedestrians He Struck

A UCLA law school professor on trial for vehicular manslaughter took the witness stand in his own defense Thursday, saying he didn’t see two pedestrians crossing the street until after he hit them.

Daniel Jay Bussel, 40, also disputed the testimony of a police officer and insisted that he had stopped at a Van Nuys stop sign shortly before the collision.

“I was being very cautious,” the bespectacled professor testified in court in Van Nuys. “I never saw anybody in the intersection.”

Bussel was driving a Jeep Cherokee owned by his wife, Los Angeles Police Commissioner Raquelle de la Rocha, on March 14 last year when he got into an accident that killed 73-year-old Betty Brown, of Van Nuys. Another pedestrian, 29-year-old Juan Huerta of Van Nuys, suffered minor injuries.

Deputy City Atty. Dan Kleban contends Bussel was negligent when he struck the pedestrians. According to a police report, Bussel “said he was rolling through the stop sign and didn’t make a complete stop.”

On Thursday, Bussel denied ever making that statement to police, saying he did stop.

“This was an accident, and he’s not a criminal,” said Bussel’s defense lawyer, Zeke Perlo. “This does not involve criminal conduct.”

If convicted of the misdemeanor offense, Bussel--a bankruptcy law specialist--faces a maximum sentence of one year in county jail, a one-year revocation of his driver’s license and a $1,000 fine.

In court Thursday, Bussel testified that he was driving his stepdaughter to school while trying to make a right turn from Hillview Park Avenue onto Fulton Avenue on the morning of March 14, 2000. It was a route near his home that he had driven hundreds of times, Bussel said.

Bussel testified that he stopped at the stop sign and rolled his Jeep forward at about 3 or 4 mph. He said he wanted to get a better look at the traffic on Fulton, a busy thoroughfare. Then he heard “a noise,” he said. He stopped his Jeep, unbuckled his seat belt and got out.

Huerta was “jumping up and down, screaming and yelling,” Bussel said. He saw an elderly woman lying face up on the street.

“She’s clearly dazed and disoriented, but not unconscious,” Bussel said. “When we looked at her, she had no broken bones or blood.”

But Brown had suffered severe head injuries, according to police. She died the next day. Huerta, who testified Wednesday that he had been walking next to Brown, suffered cuts on his hands and knees.

“It’s forgivable that an accident happened,” said Brown’s daughter-in-law, Mary Ett Brown, during a court break Thursday. “I don’t understand why [Bussel] doesn’t take responsibility for it and let the charge stand.”

Brown’s family has settled a wrongful-death lawsuit against Bussel and now only wants the law professor to own up to what he did, Mary Ett Brown said.