A Brownwood resident was arrested Tuesday evening after he was indicted by the Grand Jury of Pinal County Arizona on charges of Manslaughter.
County Attorney’s office investigator Kostas Kalaitzidis confirmed that 21-year-old Ethan Ray Echols was charged with Manslaughter based on an incident that happened after graduation night, at 3:50am May 28, 2010. According to Kalaitzidis, Echols and three friends were traveling in a 1999 Chevrolet S-10 pickup down a rural road, Arizona Farm Road, just on the northernmost limits of the city of Florence, Arizona when the accident occurred. Complete details of the accident were not available at this time; however it was revealed that two of Echols passengers were riding in the bed of his pickup truck when he lost control of the vehicle and it rolled over, killing one of the passengers in the bed of the truck and injuring the other three occupants, including Echols, according to Kalaitzidis.
“At this point, all we have is the indictment. We’ll go to court and the jury of his peers will decide his fate,” said Kalaitzidis. “Our County Attorney, James P. Walsh, his job, mission and statement is to do justice. When he (Echols) gets here, God willing justice will be done.”
Kalaitzidis pointed out that justice is not always a conviction.
“We do have cases where it is black and white, cut and dry, you know that they were intending to kill in some cases,” said Kalaitzidis. “Like this, it’s more complicated.”
The fact that Echols was not a fugitive on the run was also stressed by Kalaitzidis.
“It takes time to investigate things like this. The young man left the county, which was okay,” said Kalaitzidis. “When we had enough evidence to present to the grand jury, he was not here; we found him and had our law enforcement partners bring him in.”
The arrest took place without incident Tuesday evening at the Murphy USA gas station on West Commerce according to Brownwood Assistant Chief of Police James Fuller. The US Marshal’s Office confirmed the arrest and said it occurred “without incident.”
Pinal County Sheriff’s Office did confirm that Echols does have a history of arrests in their county on charges such as Possession of Narcotics, Possession of Liquor by Minor and Disturbing the Peace.
Echols is currently being held on $100,000 bond at the Brown County Jail, extradition is pending.
