Trucker in Tracy Morgan crash pleads not guilty amid sleep-deprivation reports
(CNN) -- The driver of a truck that plowed into a bus carrying comedian Tracy Morgan pleaded not guilty during his arraignment Wednesday amid accusations he had not slept for 24 hours before the crash.
Kevin Roper did not say much during his arraignment before Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Bradley Ferencz in New Jersey.
"Let me just give you a caution, sir," the judge told the defendant. "You make sure your lawyer knows exactly where you are. You go anywhere, you drive anywhere, you go across country somewhere else, you need to be in contact. You understand that?"
"Yes sir," Roper responded.
Prosecutors charged him with vehicular homicide and assault by auto in the Saturday pileup that killed comedian James McNair and injured Morgan and three others in the limo bus on the New Jersey Turnpike.
"We enter a not guilty plea across the board obviously -- the fatality and the remaining counts of assault by auto," defense lawyer David Glassman told the court.
Morgan, a former cast member of "Saturday Night Live" and the comedy series "30 Rock," remains in critical but stable condition. Comedian Ardie Fuqua, Jeffrey Millea and Harris Stanton were also injured; Stanton is the only one who has been released from the hospital.
Shortly after the accident on the New Jersey Turnpike, Roper, who drives a Walmart truck, posted $50,000 bond and was released the same night. The bail was kept the same.
In the criminal complaint, police said Roper had been awake for more than 24 hours at the time of the crash. He failed to notice traffic slowing in front of him and hit Morgan's bus despite trying to swerve out of the way, according to authorities.
It's unclear how they determined the trucker was sleep-deprived.
Walmart said it believed Roper was operating within federal rest guidelines but said it would take full responsibility if the investigation shows its truck was to blame. Federal law mandates drivers work no more than 14 hours for any shift -- 11 of those driving.
"The details are the subject of the ongoing investigation and we are cooperating fully with the appropriate law enforcement agencies," said Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for Walmart.
Under New Jersey law, a driver can be convicted if there's proof he had been without sleep for 24 hours when the accident occurred.
Proving he was sleep-deprived is crucial to get a conviction, in this case five to 10 years, legal analyst Paul Callan said on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."
"It's very important because otherwise, it's just an ordinary accident," he said. "Anybody can have an ordinary accident; we don't take them off in handcuffs. In New Jersey, because it is so dependent on these big roads, sleep deprivation has been recognized as a form of recklessness and it's criminal."
However, Callan said, proving the trucker was sleep-deprived will be the difficult part.
Tracy Morgan's estranged mom complains about access to her son
As if the weekend crash involving Tracy Morgan weren't awful enough on its own, there may have been some family drama surrounding the comic's hospitalization as well.
Alicia Warden, Morgan's estranged mother, told TMZ on Tuesday that her son's fiancee, Megan Wollover, had turned her away from his hospital room on Saturday. Warden told the site she'd learned about the early-morning accident from TV news.
She said she was allowed in for about five minutes Sunday when Morgan, 45, was unconscious. "I wanted to pray over him and couldn’t do that because so many people were in the room," she told TMZ.
Discord between mother and son is not new: Morgan said in 2012 that he hadn't seen his mother in 11 years. At the time, Warden had alleged to the New York Daily News that she was facing foreclosure over a $25,000 debt and was getting no help from her successful son.
In a statement issued at the time, the "SNL" and "30 Rock" alum blamed the rift on "reasons that are between us," adding that, "We all have personal family issues that we have to deal with in life, but I choose to deal with mine in private and not through the media."
On Saturday, Morgan, his assistant Jeffrey Millea and fellow comic Artie Fuqua were critically injured and comic James "Jimmy Mack" McNair was killed when a semi hit their chauffered Mercedes van, flipping it and setting off a chain reaction that involved several other vehicles. They were coming home from a Friday-night gig at a casino in Delaware.
Morgan and Wollover, who welcomed baby girl Maven together last July, have been engaged since early in 2011. He also has three sons from his first marriage.
"My [heart] goes out to all the family and friends that were also in the car accident along with my fiancé #TracyMorgan. Pls pray4 full recoveries," Wollover tweeted Monday.
On Facebook, she thanked fans for their "outpour of support," wished well for Millea and Fuqua and expressed sadness over McNair's death. "[Y]ou will truly be missed," she wrote. "You have always been someone very special to Tracy and all of us, and the world will not be the same without you."
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(CNN) -- The driver of a truck that plowed into a bus carrying comedian Tracy Morgan pleaded not guilty during his arraignment Wednesday amid accusations he had not slept for 24 hours before the crash.
Kevin Roper did not say much during his arraignment before Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Bradley Ferencz in New Jersey.
"Let me just give you a caution, sir," the judge told the defendant. "You make sure your lawyer knows exactly where you are. You go anywhere, you drive anywhere, you go across country somewhere else, you need to be in contact. You understand that?"
"Yes sir," Roper responded.
Prosecutors charged him with vehicular homicide and assault by auto in the Saturday pileup that killed comedian James McNair and injured Morgan and three others in the limo bus on the New Jersey Turnpike.
"We enter a not guilty plea across the board obviously -- the fatality and the remaining counts of assault by auto," defense lawyer David Glassman told the court.
Morgan, a former cast member of "Saturday Night Live" and the comedy series "30 Rock," remains in critical but stable condition. Comedian Ardie Fuqua, Jeffrey Millea and Harris Stanton were also injured; Stanton is the only one who has been released from the hospital.
Shortly after the accident on the New Jersey Turnpike, Roper, who drives a Walmart truck, posted $50,000 bond and was released the same night. The bail was kept the same.
In the criminal complaint, police said Roper had been awake for more than 24 hours at the time of the crash. He failed to notice traffic slowing in front of him and hit Morgan's bus despite trying to swerve out of the way, according to authorities.
It's unclear how they determined the trucker was sleep-deprived.
Walmart said it believed Roper was operating within federal rest guidelines but said it would take full responsibility if the investigation shows its truck was to blame. Federal law mandates drivers work no more than 14 hours for any shift -- 11 of those driving.
"The details are the subject of the ongoing investigation and we are cooperating fully with the appropriate law enforcement agencies," said Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for Walmart.
Under New Jersey law, a driver can be convicted if there's proof he had been without sleep for 24 hours when the accident occurred.
Proving he was sleep-deprived is crucial to get a conviction, in this case five to 10 years, legal analyst Paul Callan said on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront."
"It's very important because otherwise, it's just an ordinary accident," he said. "Anybody can have an ordinary accident; we don't take them off in handcuffs. In New Jersey, because it is so dependent on these big roads, sleep deprivation has been recognized as a form of recklessness and it's criminal."
However, Callan said, proving the trucker was sleep-deprived will be the difficult part.
Tracy Morgan's estranged mom complains about access to her son
As if the weekend crash involving Tracy Morgan weren't awful enough on its own, there may have been some family drama surrounding the comic's hospitalization as well.
Alicia Warden, Morgan's estranged mother, told TMZ on Tuesday that her son's fiancee, Megan Wollover, had turned her away from his hospital room on Saturday. Warden told the site she'd learned about the early-morning accident from TV news.
She said she was allowed in for about five minutes Sunday when Morgan, 45, was unconscious. "I wanted to pray over him and couldn’t do that because so many people were in the room," she told TMZ.
Discord between mother and son is not new: Morgan said in 2012 that he hadn't seen his mother in 11 years. At the time, Warden had alleged to the New York Daily News that she was facing foreclosure over a $25,000 debt and was getting no help from her successful son.
In a statement issued at the time, the "SNL" and "30 Rock" alum blamed the rift on "reasons that are between us," adding that, "We all have personal family issues that we have to deal with in life, but I choose to deal with mine in private and not through the media."
On Saturday, Morgan, his assistant Jeffrey Millea and fellow comic Artie Fuqua were critically injured and comic James "Jimmy Mack" McNair was killed when a semi hit their chauffered Mercedes van, flipping it and setting off a chain reaction that involved several other vehicles. They were coming home from a Friday-night gig at a casino in Delaware.
Morgan and Wollover, who welcomed baby girl Maven together last July, have been engaged since early in 2011. He also has three sons from his first marriage.
"My [heart] goes out to all the family and friends that were also in the car accident along with my fiancé #TracyMorgan. Pls pray4 full recoveries," Wollover tweeted Monday.
On Facebook, she thanked fans for their "outpour of support," wished well for Millea and Fuqua and expressed sadness over McNair's death. "[Y]ou will truly be missed," she wrote. "You have always been someone very special to Tracy and all of us, and the world will not be the same without you."
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