OAKLAND — More than five years after an SUV collided with a moving truck in a Fremont neighborhood, killing a man who was there to deliver a piano, the suspect has pleaded no contest.
Robert Greer, 62, pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter in exchange for a four-year prison term, court records show. He was scheduled to be sentenced this month, but at the March 1 hearing it was postponed until mid-April, records show. He remains out of custody in the meantime.
Police say Greer was under the influence of opiate painkillers on Dec. 8, 2017, when he crashed his SUV and killed 44-year-old Yani Leppanen, a Huntington Beach resident, who had stepped out of his truck to deliver a piano to a woman on Mowry Avenue when he was struck. Witnesses watched his SUV veer off Mowry Avenue and collide with Leppanen’s trailer at around 10 a.m. that day. Leppanen died before paramedics got there.
When police attempted to interview Greer, he appeared sedated and kept repeating, “There’s no way I could have hit that thing,” authorities said in court records. He later admitted to taking two Percocet pills and five doses of methadone per day, but denied having done it in close proximity to the crash. Toxicologists found traces of methadone, Oxycodone, and other prescription medicine in his system, police say.
Greer is due to be officially sentenced April 12 in front of Judge Amy Sekany.
Source: www.mercurynews.com