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Dotson v. State9/2/2004
ar, Sitko walked passed Dotson that evening and picked up a twenty dollar bill that was laying on his table. As Sitko walked away, Dotson stood up, approached Sitko, and punched her in the face, knocking her to the floor. Cullop testified that Dotson was immediately escorted out of the bar, screaming "I'm going to kill the fucking bitch."
The following day, Harvey Passwater, a friend of Sitko's, noticed that Sitko had a bruised eye and asked where she had gotten the bruise. When Passwater discovered that Dotson had struck Sitko in the face, he and Sitko went to Dotson's RV to confront him. Passwater testified that when he and Sitko got to Dotson's RV, he entered the RV and punched Dotson in the face numerous times until Sitko convinced him to stop. After Passwater and Sitko left the RV, Dotson called 911 to report the incident. Rick Benson, a Fort Worth Police Officer, was dispatched to Dotson's RV to investigate. According to Officer Benson, Dotson's glasses appeared "tilted and bent" and Dotson had a small amount of blood on one side of his face. But, Officer Benson testified that he did not see injuries justifying more than a citation to Passwater.
Less than twenty-four hours later, Dotson struck and killed Sitko with his RV. Joel Luna witnessed most of the incident involving Dotson and Sitko while eating with his family at a Jack-In-The-Box across the street from the dirt lot. According to Luna, as he drove towards the Jack-In-The-Box, he noticed Sitko walking down the road and made a comment to his family about the boots that she was wearing. After Luna and his family entered the Jack-In-The-Box and ordered food, they sat at a table next to a window facing towards the dirt lot where Dotson's RV was parked. A couple of minutes later, Luna's son exclaimed, "Daddy, look. They have just hit that lady, the one that was walking down the street." Luna immediately turned, looked out the window, and saw Sitko "bouncing back and forth" on the dirt underneath Dotson's RV. According to Luna, Dotson then ran over Sitko with his rear tires and exited the dirt lot without ever stopping the vehicle. After the RV pulled onto the street, Luna saw Dotson "turning around" as if he was "looking to see if somebody had seen what he just had done." When Dotson began driving away from the scene, Luna immediately told his wife to call the police, ran to his vehicle, and began following the RV. During this time, Luna was never able to get directly beside the RV; however, he was able to see Dotson's face in the driver's side mirror and to write down the RV's license plate number before returning to the scene. After Dotson was apprehended, Luna positively identified Dotson as the person that ran over Sitko.
Detective Ray Wangler, an accident reconstructionist for the Fort Worth Police Department, testified that the distance from Sitko's body to the building that Dotson's RV was parked in front of was sixty feet. Detective Wangler, however, could not determine the exact point of impact because there was no indication that Dotson ever attempted to brake or to stop the vehicle. Detective Wangler testified that when he surveyed the lot where the collision occurred, there were no skid marks, scratches on the pavement, or any other marks in the parking lot that could be attributed to Dotson's RV. But, according to Detective Wangler, based on the location and the direction of Sitko's body and the location of a purse that Sitko was carrying at the time of the collision, he believed that Dotson could have driven out of the parking lot without striking Sitko.
As a result of the collision, Sitko suffered numerous abrasions, including "a gliding abrasion" on the left side of her body from sliding across a r
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