A Texas jury found Rashad Owens guilty of capital murder Friday and sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole after he was charged with killing four people when his car slammed into a crowd of people at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival last year.
Prosecutors argued that Owens, 23, acted with intent and malice when he hit people with his car and sped through several city blocks, leaving nearly 30 victims and a trail of blood behind him, according to Reuters.
Owens, an aspiring rapper, was in town to perform at a nightclub when Austin police tried to pull him over along a downtown street at around 12:30 a.m. on Mar. 13, 2014, for driving without his headlights on, authorities said. Owens sped away at about 55 mph into crowds of people, some lined up for nightclubs, until his car crashed. He then fled the vehicle and tried to escape before being caught, police said at the trial, USA Today reported.
Prosecutor Marc Chavez said that the minute Owens heard the thuds of his initial six victims, he should have stopped or slowed down.
"You don't floor it. How in the world do you go 99 percent throttle after that?" he said.
Jamie West, 27, of Austin, and Steven Craenmehr, 35, of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, died at the scene. Sandy Le, 26, died about a week later from injuries suffered in the accident, and 18-year-old DeAndre Tatum, of Fort Worth, died shortly after that, according to NBC's Texas affiliate KXAN-TV.
Owens' lawyers did not dispute that he killed and injured people, but he argued he was not guilty of capital murder, saying that he never intended to kill anyone and simply panicked while being pursued by police, which resulted in him being unable to react to the people in front of him.
Owens did not testify, but prosecutors played police video from the scene where Owens is heard saying "I should have just stopped," and "Did I kill anybody? I promise I didn't mean to kill anybody if I did."
