photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Brandon Vess, left, appears with his attorney, Nicholas Hayes, at his trial on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

A jury is now deliberating the case of a 31-year-old Lawrence man who is accused of drunkenly slamming his SUV into Big Mill restaurant and injuring three people on Nov. 4, 2022.

Defense attorney Nicholas Hayes on Tuesday morning attempted to convince the jury that “something else” was to blame for the crash — not the actions of his client, Brandon Vess. Hayes raised the possibility that another vehicle had struck Vess’ 2005 Toyota Highlander, causing it to spin out of control and hit the historic building at 900 Mississippi St. He also floated the idea that Vess’ brakes had failed, which officers on Monday had indicated was a very rare occurrence based on their experience.

“There is nothing that anybody could have done to prevent (the crash) from happening,” Hayes told jurors during his closing arguments.

The defense’s single witness, Nathan Haig, a detective with the Lawrence Police Department and a member of LPD’s Crash Investigation Unit, did not offer much support for Hayes’ theories based on his own analysis of the car’s CDR, or Crash Data Retrieval, system, which is linked to airbag deployment and contains information about how fast the car was going, whether the brakes were applied and other data points.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Lawrence Police Detective Nathan Haig testifies at the trial of Brandon Vess on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

As Hayes attempted to get Haig, his witness, to agree that something else besides reckless actions on the part of Vess could have caused the accident, Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald objected that Hayes was testifying instead of inquiring, and Judge Sally Pokorny admonished Hayes.

“You can’t testify, Mr. Hayes,” she said. “You can ask questions.”

Hayes at one point used a bottle of hand sanitizer and a pen to demonstrate how two cars on a road might interact, but Haig appeared to have little interest in the demonstration.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Brandon Vess, left, is pictured at his trial on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Douglas County District Court. His attorney, Nicholas Hayes, is at center, and Judge Sally Pokorny is at right.

On cross-examination by Greenwald, Haig told the jury that Vess’ car was going eastbound at 58 mph five seconds before the crash occurred. The speed limit on Ninth Street is 30 mph. Greenwald asked Haig if he would consider it reasonable or prudent to drive twice the speed limit when the road was wet like it was on that rainy autumn night, to which Haig replied: “I would consider that unsafe driving.”

Haig indicated that the CDR data does not indicate whether the brakes actually worked, but only whether they were applied. In this case he said that the brakes had been applied but also that “brakes don’t do a lot in a side spin like this one.”

Haig said that he saw no evidence that Vess’ car had been struck by another car, based on its position as it hit the restaurant, his analysis of the CDR data and the fact that photos revealed no apparent paint transfer, which commonly occurs when two vehicles collide.

Vess did not testify on his own behalf.

During closing arguments, Greenwald asked the jury to focus on three numbers: .16, Vess’ blood alcohol level on the night of the crash, which is more than twice the legal limit; 58, the speed of Vess’ SUV, which was twice the speed limit; and three, the number of people who were injured by his actions.

Greenwald argued to the jury that Hayes was simply trying to distract them with hypotheticals and had offered no actual evidence that “something else” had caused the crash — a tactic he likened to “chasing zebras” instead of acknowledging the plain horse in the room, i.e., that Vess was simply drunk and speeding and lost control of his car on a wet road.

Twice during Hayes’ closing argument he was corrected by the judge for claiming something was in evidence that wasn’t.

Hayes also disputed that the victims, who testified Monday, had suffered bodily harm.

“We don’t have it in this case,” he said, dismissing the cuts and large bruises that jurors saw in photographs as too minor to count — a claim greeted by stony expressions on several jurors’ faces.

Vess is out on bond and is facing three felony counts of aggravated battery while driving under the influence, as well as misdemeanor counts of having no proof of insurance and reckless driving.

At a recent pretrial conference, Hayes told Pokorny that Vess had rejected a plea deal that would have allowed him to plead to the three felonies with the two misdemeanors being dropped.

Vess has two previous DUI convictions, one in March of 2017 and another in April of 2023, as the Journal-World reported.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

photo by: Submitted

A vehicle that hit the Big Mill restaurant at Ninth and Mississippi streets is shown shortly after the accident on Nov. 4, 2022.

photo by: Kim Callahan

Emergency crews respond after a car struck the Big Mill restaurant at Ninth and Mississippi streets on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022.