By Malaika Fraley
Contra Costa Times
MARTINEZ, Calif. — Antioch police Officer James Vincent was chasing a car thief in March last year when his patrol car hit a dip in the road and flew into a Pittsburg house.
Now paralyzed from the waist down and retired from the job he loved, Vincent on Thursday confronted for the first time the Antioch man who led him and other officers on a hazardous, high-speed pursuit that fateful day.
“You are a criminal. You are very comfortable being a criminal, so much so that you mark your prison gang on your neck,” Vincent told David Cole in a Martinez courtroom, where Cole was sentenced to 12 years and eight months in prison.
“You could still change, though,” Vincent said. “I hope that you do.”
Cole, 37, was a parolee with an extensive criminal history in February 2009 when Antioch police, investigating a car theft, issued a warrant for his arrest. He escaped capture that month, eluding police during a high-speed pursuit when he drove the wrong direction down a Contra Costa County highway.
On March 9, 2009, Cole was driving another stolen car at high speeds while officers chased him through several Contra Costa cities. For the second time in two months, Cole drove the wrong way down Highway 242.
About five miles into the pursuit, Cole made his way onto West Leland Road, where Vincent, a six-year police veteran just days shy of his 29th birthday, crashed into the house. The family living there was not injured, but Vincent’s spine broke. While medics attended to him, other officers caught up with Cole in Antioch.
The last thing that Cole wanted was to hurt anyone, his attorney David Headley said on Cole’s behalf Thursday because he was “too shaken up” to speak for himself. He wanted to take responsibility, Headley said, and did so by pleading guilty to all eight felonies charged in the case, including evading police resulting in great bodily injury.
“You took a healthy young man who was serving his community in a dangerous profession and you placed him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life,” Judge Brian Haynes told Cole. “The court has imposed the maximum sentence and I have to say, you deserve every day of it.”
Vincent, now 30 and living in his native Turlock, said he has been able to maintain a positive attitude with the support of friends and has been seeing results from his physical therapy sessions. He’s getting ready to apply for work at a police department, this time as a dispatcher.
Vincent also got a tattoo on the back of his neck after the accident. It reads, “Broken, not beat.”
Copyright 2010 Contra Costa Newspapers