Shay Dillon

Prosecutors have charged a Powell man with vehicular homicide after he ran over and killed a 75-year-old pedestrian in a September accident.

The Park County Attorney’s Office filed the misdemeanor charge against 21-year-old Shay Dillon last month and he was arrested at his workplace on Friday afternoon. Dillon pleaded not guilty during a Monday appearance in Park County Circuit Court.

After posting a $2,500 cash or surety bond and being released from jail on Monday afternoon, Dillon will be prohibited from driving “for any reason” while he awaits further proceedings in the case. He told Circuit Court Judge Bruce Waters that the restriction wouldn’t be a problem, saying he stopped driving following the fatal Sept. 23 incident.

Charging documents say Dillon pulled out of the Rimrock Tire parking lot and onto Coulter Avenue that afternoon without ever looking to his right.

“I didn’t think I needed to because I was turning right,” he later explained to Powell police, adding, “If I looked around, I probably would have seen him.”

Dennis Brophy, who was walking east along the sidewalk, was struck by the front end of Dillon’s 2007 Toyota Camry. He was knocked backwards and trapped under the car. A passing driver saw Brophy “slamming his fist on the bumper, but [he] could not reach the hood due to how far under the vehicle his body was,” Powell Police Officer Dustin Del Biaggio wrote in an affidavit filed in support of the criminal case.

Dillon, meanwhile, told police he didn’t know why his car had come to a sudden stop, and got out to see what had happened. Dillon had brought his Camry to Rimrock Tire because of a slow leak in his rear driver’s side tire and thought it might have popped, the affidavit says. But when he saw the tire was still intact, Dillon got back in the car and tried pulling forward. To his confusion, the Camry didn’t move far — and Dillon saw another driver waving and trying to get his attention.

That driver told police he honked and yelled, “He’s under your car!” Another driver similarly stopped on the highway and yelled — and Dillon then realized he had run over Brophy.

According to one witness, Dillon broke down in tears. “I didn’t see him,” he said.

One of the drivers who witnessed the accident told police he couldn’t understand how Dillon failed to see Brophy under his car before pulling forward, the charging documents say, but the other said he did not think it would have been possible for Dillon to see the man.

Dillon’s Camry moved no more than a few feet, but pulling further forward caused even greater damage, the affidavit indicates, crushing Brophy’s abdomen and chest.

When Del Biaggio arrived at the scene around 3 p.m., Brophy was pinned under the car, struggling to breathe and unresponsive. He was taken to Powell Valley Healthcare and then flown by helicopter to Billings Clinic, where he died a couple hours later.

Brophy was well-known in the Powell community, not only as a long-time psychology professor at Northwest College, but as a supporter of the arts, a world traveler and owner of some ostentatiously decked-out vehicles.

Del Biaggio’s affidavit alleges that Dillon drove in “a criminally negligent manner” by failing to yield the right-of-way to Brophy and causing his death. To convict Dillon of the vehicular homicide charge, prosecutors will have to prove that Dillon made “a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise” and failed to “perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk.”

Del Biaggio said Dillon was cooperative with the department’s investigation — allowing them to search his cellphone for any signs of distracted driving and submitting to a drug influence evaluation.

At the time of the incident, Dillon was awaiting a court appearance on allegations that he drove the Camry while under the influence of alcohol on Sept. 12, and he later pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor offense. However, police found zero indication that Dillon was under the influence of any substances when he struck Brophy. Officer Matt Koritnik, a certified drug recognition expert, concluded on the day of the crash that Dillon was “NOT IMPAIRED, and is able to operate a vehicle safely.”

In court on Monday, Deputy Park County Attorney Saige Smith mentioned the drunk driving arrest in arguing for the $2,500 cash or surety bond. The prosecutor noted Dillon also received a citation for careless driving in December 2019, which she said came in connection with a crash that “was not reported until the next day” and resulted in Dillon being hospitalized in Billings.

“The state does have concerns based on those issues” within the last year, Smith said, adding, “It seems to be sort of an escalation.”

She noted that Dillon has been cooperative with law enforcement, but, she said, “that doesn’t minimize the circumstances that somebody is dead now.”

A pre-trial conference in the case is tentatively set for Feb. 2.