MCKINNEY, Texas — The hit-and-run investigation involving a motorcyclist and the Mayor of Prosper is being referred to the Collin County District Attorneys office for possible criminal charges including "accident involving personal injury or death" - a charge related to leaving the scene of an accident without rendering aid.
72-year-old Rodney Carver remains hospitalized, unconscious and in critical condition 10 days after the accident. Prosper Mayor Ray Smith maintains he never realized a motorcyclist rear-ended his pickup truck and was temporarily lodged beneath his vehicle.
Thursday morning, Barbara Carver, the motorcyclist's wife, and her attorney arrived at McKinney Police headquarters for a private meeting with detectives. After an hour, they emerged from the police department with the accident report in hand and with many of their own witness accounts corroborated.
The report, marked as a hit-and-run investigation, indicates Smith was cut off by another vehicle exiting a parking lot as he was westbound on University Drive. The report says Smith came to a sudden stop to avoid hitting that vehicle. Carver, following behind on his Harley Davidson, slammed into the tailgate and rear bumper of Smith's truck, according to the report.
The police report says Smith "fled the scene of the accident and drug (Carver) approximately 27 feet before (Carver) became dislodged from under (the truck)."
Prior to the release of the police report, the Prosper Mayor admitted involvement to WFAA. But, after offering a prayer for Carver before a Prosper City Council meeting, insisted again that he never realized it was a motorcyclist who had hit his truck from behind.
"Did you ever call 911 after the crash at all?" WFAA reporter Matt Howerton asked Smith.
"No, because the car I thought hit me I was chasing," he said of the vehicle that passed by him shortly after the collision.
McKinney Police have told WFAA that witnesses recorded Smith's license plate and that when officers reached him at home a short time later that he showed no signs of impairment.
"I still don't like the way he's coming forward saying this is how it happened," Carver's wife Barbara told WFAA after meeting with McKinney detectives on Thursday. "Because I don't believe any of it."
"If it turns out that the crash report that I am holding in my hand ends up being the gospel truth of the way it happened out there, then it would appear that there is shared fault among the parties," admitted Carver's attorney Brian Mincher, referring to the motorcyclist crashing into the back of the stopped pickup truck.
"However I am not satisfied that the information we have on this report is the sum total of all the information that tells this full story," Mincher said. "I think that the full story is yet to be told here."
And Ronald Carver's version of that story, with the motorcyclist still unconscious, remains to be told.