Yet Jeffrey A. Pedone Trout, 39, of 3607 Thornhill Circle E., was driving a pickup truck properly registered in his name at the time of the crash, even though he had a suspended driver's license. 

The March 21 crash also killed Sarah Towery, 24, of Auburn, Ill., and Earl E. Smith III, 20, of Riverton, Ill., who were traveling westbound on 350 South when Trout's 1989 Chevrolet pickup truck swerved left of center, grazed one vehicle, swerved off the right shoulder and crossed the centerline again, hitting the 1996 Toyota Camry in which Smith was the driver and Towery was the passenger.

Towery was a student at the University of Illinois-Springfield and worked at PSI, a Springfield, Ill., engineering firm where Smith was a drill rig operator. Smith was a volunteer firefighter in Riverton.

Tippecanoe County Coroner Martin Avolt said Monday he has yet to receive results of toxicology tests on Trout and Smith, which would indicate the presence of alcohol or any other substances in the drivers' blood.

Avolt's office typically orders blood tests of all drivers involved in fatal vehicle crashes. And Avolt's office said it could be weeks before those results are made public.

When asked whether he's looking into whether Trout had been drinking before the crash, Sgt. Max Smith of the Lafayette Police Department's traffic division said, "the investigation's continuing." 

February guilty plea

Witnesses to the crash have said Trout was leaning far to the right possibly using a cellular telephone moments before he drove into oncoming traffic. In addition to his drunken driving arrests, Trout had been ticketed for speeding in Tippecanoe County twice in the past nine months. Just six weeks before the fatal crash, Trout was in Boone Superior Court 2 pleading guilty to what was at least his third drunken driving charge. He entered a plea agreement under which he would have faced six months on work release or house arrest, 2 1/2 years on probation and a one-year license suspension. 

Lafayette attorney Nicholas Deets represented Trout at the plea hearing. Trout was scheduled to be sentenced April 9. According to court records, that most recent drunken driving charge grew out of an Oct.19 traffic stop in which a state trooper clocked Trout driving 104 mph on Interstate 65 south of Lebanon. After he failed a roadside sobriety test, Trout registered a blood-alcohol content of .14 percent by breath test. The legal limit for driving in Indiana is .10 percent.

"Obviously, something's wrong with our society," said Dan Towery, the father of Sarah Towery, who was already well aware of Trout's lengthy drunken driving history.

Towery was traveling with his wife, Sarah's mother Margie, in the car in front of Smith and Sarah at the time of the fatal crash. He reserved further comment until after toxicology results are released.

Boone County Prosecutor John Buchanan said Trout received the standard plea agreement for someone facing their third OWI. Driving history records available at the time of the plea agreement indicated only two prior convictions one in Boone County in 1993 and one in Tippecanoe County in 1995 although there are references in court documents to one and possibly two other drunken driving convictions.

A judge had yet to accept the plea agreement and sentence Trout. "I think we handled this case about like we would have handled any case given what I was aware this guy's record was," Buchanan said. He said Trout and anyone accused of a crime other than murder has a constitutional right to post bond.

"We can't put him in prison until he's convicted," Buchanan said. "Even if we had convicted him, we couldn't put him in prison forever." Court records indicate Trout also was convicted of misdemeanor drunken driving in August 1993 in Boone County. He had a felony OWI conviction in Tippecanoe County in March 1995.

Earlier, according to an affidavit filed as part of the Tippecanoe County case, Trout had a felony drunken driving conviction in Arizona. Details of that case could not be located.

Trout, who worked in construction, had lived in Indiana since 1993. He spent much of his childhood in California, but graduated from Harrison High School in 1977. He had a son in Arizona.