A man who intentionally swerved into a couple on a motorcycle in Hood County, causing them to crash and injure themselves in 2015, was sentenced to 15 years in prison Thursday, his attorney confirmed.
William Sam Crum, 69, was convicted of two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in a jury trial in the 355th District Court in Hood County.
Crum had been in jail since his arrest Oct. 19, 2015, said his attorney, Lukas Lawrence.
He was accused of purposely swerving into a Kawasaki motorcycle on Tin Top Highway the previous Saturday, causing motorcyclist Eric Sanders, 37, to crash.
A video of the incident taken by a fellow motorcyclist with a camera attached to his helmet went viral soon after its release, attracting millions of views.
It shows the motorcycle from behind speeding up to pass Crum’s Mercury on the two-lane road and Crum suddenly swerving across the painted dividing lines and clipping the bike, causing it and the bikers to fall and slide along the pavement.
On the video, Sanders is seen getting up almost immediately and limping toward the road with what turned out to be minor injuries. His passenger, Debra Simpson, 38, lies motionless on her back on the side of the road with a broken arm and scrapes and bruises that landed her in the intensive care unit of Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth.
“I don’t care,” Crum says when confronted after the crash.
In a jailhouse interview the day after his arrest, Crum showed his leg where he claimed that a spider had bitten him, causing him to momentarily lose control of his vehicle before the wreck. And he said that if Sanders hadn’t been “breaking the law” by trying to pass in a no-pass zone the crash would never have happened.
His jury trial on one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon causing bodily injury lasted two days, his attorney said.
Crum, no stranger to legal trouble, will remain in the Hood County jail until he is transferred to a unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
