Police instructor: Officer driving too fast when he killed pedestrian on Morehead Street

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Phillip Barker was violating department policy five years ago when he barreled through uptown Charlotte at more than 100 mph and struck and killed a pedestrian crossing Morehead Street, a Mecklenburg prosecutor said Thursday at the start of the officer’s involuntary manslaughter trial.

Barker, according to testimony from his former driving instructor at the police academy, failed to show “due regard” for the safety of others in the 35 mph zone. While CMPD allows its officers to exceed the speed limit on emergency calls, the department also says they should travel at a “reasonable and prudent” speed.

Barker, who was responding to a high-priority call of an accident about 1 1/2 miles away, failed to do that on the morning of July 8, 2017, instructor Tommie Horton said.

“He floored it,” Assistant District Attorney Bill Bunting said in his opening statement of the trial.

The officer never slowed, as he was required to do, when he flashed into the intersection of Morehead and Euclid Avenue, where pedestrian James Michael Short was crossing the street.

Barker’s car struck Short with such force that Short’s body broke apart, Bunting said. Some of it soared high in the air, he said, while the rest landed on the street more than a football field away.

A video from Barker’s body camera shows the officer, with his siren and lights on, accelerating down Morehead Street after getting a 3 a.m. call for a serious wreck at Morehead and Kings. Suddenly, there is a jolting collision and most of Barker’s windshield disappears. The shards of glass that remain reflect the squad car’s flashing blue lights as Barker brings his Chevrolet Caprice to a stop.

“Did you hit him?” a fellow officer asks Barker.

“Yeah, I did,” the officer responds in a low-key voice.

The six-minute-long video clip, never seen in public before, brought a dramatic opening jolt to the trial — and sent Short’s mother from the courtroom in tears.

Barker, now 29, is the first CMPD officer criminally charged with an on-duty death in seven years. If convicted, he faces up to 5 years in prison.

While Bunting told the 12-member jury that Barker violated both his training and the public’s trust, defense attorney George Laughrun countered that Baker was responding to a “priority one” call and that Short played a major role in his own death.

Laughrun said Short’s autopsy had shown that his blood-alcohol level was three times the state limit for driving drunk. He had also ingested “a cocktail” of prescription drugs, including a heavy dose of Xanax, which potentially impaired his balance, perception and decision-making while putting him in the path of Barker’s car.

Barker’s lawyers have previously said that Short, a 28-year-old computer student at Central Piedmont Community College, had drunk so much at a South End bar that night that he had been ordered to leave.

Under cross-examination by Laughrun, Hutton acknowledged that during emergency calls, CMPD leaves it to its officers to balance public safety with a quick response.

Laughrun also reminded the jury that Short was wearing dark-clothing and had consumed large amounts of alcohol and drugs, making him both difficult to see and to predict, the lawyer said.

The trial, which will continue Friday, is expected to last most of next week.

Barker was originally charged with misdemeanor death by vehicle. In December 2017, however, the District Attorney’s Office took the case before a grand jury, which returned the far more serious involuntary manslaughter indictment.

In March 2019, the city settled with Short’s family for $950,000, the Observer reported at the time.