© St. Petersburg Times, published November 19, 2000

Case closed, but not for grieving spouse

Two years after his wife and daughter died in their burning car, a man pursues the other driver in court.

Bruce Murakami was pulling out of his leafy subdivision on Nov. 16, 1998, when he heard the bangs. He followed the foul, black smoke blotting the blue sky. A sickly premonition drew him to its source.

There, a few blocks away on Hillsborough Avenue, were the remnants of a Ford Aerostar minivan. It was now a tangle of punched-in steel and glass shards. The frame was stretched like taffy, lopsided and oblong. It burned.

The alloy wheels were all Murakami recognized.

He screamed.

Buckled up inside were his wife, Cindy Murakami, 45, and their 11- year-old daughter, Chelsea.

It has been a full two years. Murakami still has his bad days, slumped on the beach and staring dully at the rippling surf. He snuffed out his friendships. He walked away from his construction business. What lingers is a grief so deep, it could shred faith or calcify it.

Outrage lingers, too.

"It's just the injustice of this," says Murakami, 50, now sitting in his immaculate, rented condominium near Treasure Island.

"What's happened to our so-called (justice) system?"

On Monday, after an unusually long delay, the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office closed the Murakami accident case. No criminal charges will be filed against Justin Cabezas, the 19-year-old driver of the Intrepid that smashed into the van.

But that decision has only hardened Murakami's resolve. He is on a mission to get Cabezas slapped with two counts of vehicular homicide.

The decision to close the case, "just fueled my fire up," says Murakami. "I'm hiring a criminal attorney on Monday and I'm going to go after the (State) Attorney's Office and going after the (Florida Highway Patrol)."

Some 65 miles south, in Nokomis, Cabezas' mother tells of another grief, still raw. It is that of her son.

"Justin's world kind of ended with this accident," says Janice Cabezas, standing before her pink stucco home, a Mercedes in the driveway.

"I know there were many, many accidents from that one exit," says Justin's father, Louis Cabezas, "and nothing was ever done to correct it."

Last year, 184 people died on Hillsborough's roads. Most of those deaths didn't result in criminal charges.

To bring a case of vehicular homicide, prosecutors must be confident they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a driver's actions were reckless, not just sloppy.

During the past 24 months, Sharon Vollrath, the prosecutor assigned to the Murakami case, met five times with a polite, if passionate, Murakami. She considered the Florida Highway Patrol's dense homicide investigative report that found Justin Cabezas may not have been going much faster than the 55 mph limit.

Vollrath also looked at the accident reconstruction report by a firm Murakami hired for about $6,000. It pegged Cabezas' speed at 78 mph to 86 mph.

The report will be used in Murakami's pending civil suit against Dollar Rent-A-Car, which rented the Intrepid to the Cabezases.

The lawsuit, filed in Hillsborough Circuit Court by Bill Winters of Richard Mulholland & Associates, claims the company contributed to the death by renting the car to the parents, who loaned it to their son, essentially making him an authorized driver.

"Unless the car is stolen, (Dollar Rent-A-Car is) on hook for it," Winters said.

Short of an admission of guilt, criminal charges against Justin Cabezas would not impact the civil suit since they are inadmissible in court, attorneys said. Murakami says he understands this, and that he just wants justice.

In the days following the crash, state troopers said witnesses thought Cabezas was going fast, maybe even racing with another driver. But, in the end, a case against Cabezas would probably have hinged on contradictory experts, making it difficult to clinch a vehicular homicide conviction with a possible 15-year sentence.

"We feel that we do not have adequate evidence to prove this case," Vollrath said.

It was not a conclusion she arrived at easily, she said.

"These are very hard decisions to make, professionally and personally," said Vollrath. "When the victim's family first contacts our office, they are at the height of their grief and they are looking to us for many reasons, including making sense of their loss. But it is our job as prosecutors to follow the law," said Vollrath.

"People can have car accidents where there's no criminal culpability," said Vollrath.

She was a young woman with a 5-year-old boy and a hankering for more than her dusty, California hometown.

He was Hawaiian, had broad shoulders and a well-worn passport.

They met some 20 years ago, the day she strode into a Volkswagen dealership in Oahu. He sold her a convertible and asked her to dinner.

Bruce and Cindy married a year later. They had a boy, and eventually adopted Chelsea from Korea, a melting pot of a family.

They ended up in Florida several years ago and joined Without Walls International Church, where they taught a parenting class. Bruce Murakami is still involved in the church.

Cindy's son, Josh, whom Bruce adopted years ago, is 25 and lives in Tulsa, Okla., a graduate of Oral Roberts University. Their son, Brody, now 19, has moved back in with Murakami after attending a Christian boarding school.

Murakami says his sons are his companions now.

"Your friends actually become very uncomfortable with your loss," he said. "They didn't know what to say."

For 15 years, he and Cindy had built up a concrete sealing business. He now lives off payouts from his life insurance policy and what's left of the $100,000 he got from the Cabezases' car insurance company.

Lately, his successes are linked to the accident. A petition drive led officials to prohibit left turns from the strip mall exit where Cindy and Chelsea were killed. He got the speed limit on W Hillsborough Avenue lowered by 5 mph, to 50 mph. He launched a Web site honoring his late wife and daughter.

Now, he rides his Harley motorcycle or reads books on surviving tragedies. Or he thinks about Nov. 16, 1998.

"I relive it every day. Cindy was trapped in the car. What a way to go," he said.

Janice Cabezas says the Murakamis are never far from her family's thoughts.

"Many, many prayers have been said for their family," she said.

Justin is now 21, and his parents said they want to protect his privacy after the emotionally devastating accident.

"There were many nights, trust me, I'd stay up with my son all night," she said. "Justin is just now beginning to come into his own person."

In high school, Justin was an ROTC officer.

"This is a kid who's never been in trouble, has no drug record, no drinking record," Mrs. Cabezas said.

The only mark on his driving record is a ticket six months ago in Pinellas County for driving 92 mph in a 65 mph zone, according to records. Cabezas went to driver's school and got the adjudication withheld.

The Cabezases said they wonder whether money is now driving Murakami more than sadness. Even so, Janice Cabezas said, she has a special understanding for Murakami's pain.

"I have a deceased son," she said, declining to go into details. "I know grief."

Murakami sounded surprised to learn of the Cabezases' thoughts and circumstances. The two families have never spoken.

But Murakami said he has no intention of backing down. He intends to lobby incoming Hillsborough County State Attorney Mark Ober to reopen the case.

"No one's heard the end of this."