Suspect in Cody Boyd bicycle fatality says hes sleepless amid
police investigation
The "what-ifs have kept me up all night replaying it in my mind
over, and over, and over
."
James McClure
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
Jerry McClures emotions are running practically out of control.
He said that he "cant fathom the kind of loss" the mother
of a dead child must feel.
Then, reflecting on his own life, he fears that his possible implication
in the traffic accident that killed 9-year-old Hailey bicyclist Cody Boyd four weeks ago
could mean the end of his career as a truck driver.
He said he doesnt "feel any guilt" about the July 12
accident at the corner of Second Avenue and Bullion Street because he doesnt recall
ever seeing Boyd or feeling a jolt when Boyd was crushed by a 100-foot tractor-trailer
that McClure may have been driving.
McClure is a talkative and, these days, an understandably jittery
40-year-old who said that driving semi-tractor-trailers is the "one thing in life
Ive wanted to do."
During a 70-minute interview conducted at a picnic table outside his
modest, tree-shaded home on the north side of Shoshone Sunday afternoon, McClure
acknowledged that he drove a 42,000 pound rig pulling two flatbed trailers at the time and
place Boyd was killed.
Working for the Twin Falls-based B-Bar Ranch trucking company, he was
heading toward Croy Canyon to pick up 53 tons of hay from the 600-acre Croy Creek Ranch.
Hailey police say the truck matches eyewitness descriptions, and the right
rear tire of the rig matches tire imprints left at the scene.
But McClure is tormented by the fact that nobody will know for sure if he
is the responsible driver until a law enforcement lab completes DNA work, possibly in the
next week.
While he talked to a reporter, McClurea 6-foot, 3-inch tall
bachelor, whom coworkers nicknamed "Hasselhoff" because he resembled the star of
the Bay Watch television serieschain-smoked cigarettes, flicking ashes into a green
glass ashtray, his hands sometimes trembling visibly.
For McClure, who said he has only been driving trucks for 2 1/2 years and
lacks the necessary seniority to get most of the high-paying jobs, the business is not
highly lucrative.
He supports a mortgage on a small green and white aging mobile home and
drives a silver Honda sedan for personal transportation.
He declined to be photographed during the interview.
As for speaking with the press, he said he doesnt know if
theres any "wisdom" to it, but declared hes not the kind of person
to "run and hide."
#
The "what-ifs" of the accident, McClure said, "have kept me
up all night replaying it in my mind over, and over, and over
."
The first time he heard of Boyds death, he said, was just hours
after it happened when he pulled into the Southfield Dairy in Wendell, about a half-hour
drive west of Shoshone. Another driver asked him if he had heard that a boy had been
killed in the area they were driving, and McClure said no.
"I dont listen to the radio," he said. "So, [the
other driver] was looking at his truck and trailer, looking for anything. I looked at
mine. We didnt see any signs of trauma or anything.
"He was more worried than I was, and I told him, look, the cops
are two blocks down from where this happened. So are the EMTs (emergency medical
technicians). Do you really think we would have gotten out of the canyon without being
pulled over? Its unfathomable to me that [the accident] could have been seen and the
trucker not stopped. Okay?"
After three more runs that day, he said, a driver told him police were
searching for a white truck with trailers.
"I was dark blue with red trailers," he said. "Obviously,
they were looking for someone else. It wasnt us."
"If youre the guy," he said, "youre going to go
and tell them. Its that simple. At least for me it was."
Many have questioned whether the driver could have felt the impact when
Boyd and the rig collided, and whether it is reasonable to expect the driver to look in
the rearview mirror and see the aftermath of the accident.
McClure said, "As far as the rearview mirrors, you make the same
perfunctory glances that you do in your car, unless youre making a turn."
And if Boyd indeed collided with the last set of wheels on the last
trailer, as police believe he did, then McClure said no driver would be able to feel that.
"Youll feel the drivers, which are the set of duals attached to
the tractor," he said. "Those you can feel on the road, you can feel going over
objects. Anything going on 70 to 100 feet in back of you, you wont feel it."
McClure said his route on the morning of Boyds death took him from
driving north on Highway 75, right onto Fourth Avenue in Hailey, left onto Croy, right
onto Third Avenue, and then left onto Bullion Street for the drive into Croy Canyon.
"I dont remember if the light [at Main Street] was in my
favor," he said.
Another reason McClure said he didnt talk to police sooner, is that
law enforcement never pulled him over.
"So, my point is, if I let this whole thing
gookay?its a sad thing all around, but there was nothing I could do. I
didnt go forward [for two weeks] because I didnt see anything or hear
anything. There was nothing I could have told them."
#
Then, 2 1/2 weeks ago, he once again began to worry. Police, he
discovered, were scrutinizing B-Bar Ranch trucks. And, oddly, he had not been called into
work for a few days when business should have been busy.
"So I called my supervisor," he said. "I called to find out
if I was working on Monday. He said, call me in the morning, and well see if
weve got anything going. I said, Okay did they find anything? He
said, Well, they took a tire print and one of your mud flaps.
"I said, Fine, does [Hailey police Capt. Brian McNary, the
cases chief investigator] want us to call him? Whats going on? He said,
No, he said hell call you if he needed to. At this point, Im
thinking whats going on here?
"So then I read the article from the first week in the Mountain
Express
.At that point, I thought, Okay, hes checking our trucks out,
and Im not working. "
#
McClure began searching for a new job. During an interview at Walker Sand
and Gravel in Bellevue, his potential new employer asked him if hed heard about the
accident. He said he had.
"And thats when the guy said, Yeah, and now theyre
looking for a blue truck," McClure said.
"I said, Okay, I was driving a blue truck. We concluded
the interview.
"I grabbed a copy of the newspaper. And this whole entire time, I had
heard that they were not looking at any criminal negligence on the part of the driver.
Then I read the paper, and it says, Police Dragnet closes in. Truck that
killed Cody Boyd, so on and so forth. "And then the officers are saying they think it
may be homicide or misdemeanor leaving the site of an accident. So I got hot. Theyre
looking at my truck but theyre not calling me? And this is what Im reading
theyre saying? So I called the department."
That was on a Wednesday, 13 days ago, McClure said. On Friday, he said,
Hailey police Capt. McNary interviewed him alone at the Hailey police station. McClure
filled out a statement, he said, and McNary told him the police would be in touch.
"I couldnt afford a lawyer, and I didnt see a reason
to," McClure said. "I just felt Im going to walk in there because Im
not guilty of anything."
McClure now drives tanker trucks for a Twin Falls-based company.
After the interview with Hailey police, he thought he was pretty much off
the hook, he said, because police lab work had so far been inconclusive. Then, he came
home Tuesday night of last week, he said, and his "phone machine was going
nuts." Acquaintances told him a television news program in Twin Falls had apparently
picked up the story and reported almost everything but his name.
"So I called my [new] supervisor. I wasnt going to say anything
about this until something concrete turns up," he said, "because I didnt
want to lose this job, basically because of misconceptions about trucks or my own personal
character."
But the supervisor didnt fire him.
When asked if he feels any sense of relief at that, he said, "yeah, I
do. Like I said, I still dont know where [the police are] going to go with
this."
Still, he said, he potentially will have to live with the fact that a
truck he was driving killed a nine-year-old boy. Or, he may never know for sure. The
prospect, apparently, has weighty implications for both his soul and his livelihood.
"Ive never been married, and Ive never had children, so I
cant fathom that kind of loss," he said. "But at the same time, I
cant feel any guilt. If I had seen it and did not stop, then yes."
For a few days after the accident, McClure said he considered giving up
truck driving, because it can be dangerous.
"Youre constantly looking at that," he said, "every
time you get behind the wheel. Am I going to die today? Is somebody else going to get
killed?"
Hailey police have said they are motivated in their investigation to reach
a sense of "closure" both for Boyds mother, and for the community.
"At this point," he said, "I dont know what closure
is going to mean. This is not something that anything in my life has prepared me for. I
dont seek out attention. Im a private person. But in this instance, I did not
want to wait. I wanted to step forward and talk."