Bakdash's Case Goes to Jury After Closing Arguments

During closing statements this morning in the murder trial of Timothy Bakdash, the Roseville-native who fatally struck 23-year-old University of Minnesota senior Benjamin Van Handel with his car last April, attorneys debated Bakdash’s level of intoxication, his credibility and whether he said, as one witness claimed, that “he intended to run down his victims and kill all of them.”

Bakdash is facing one count of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in the first degree, and a jury is deliberating whether to convict him of those or lesser charges.

Assistant Hennepin County Attorney William Richardson spoke repeatedly of “carnage” and used an extended analogy between the car Bakdash drove into four people on a Dinkytown sidewalk and “a gun fired into a crowd of people.”  

“Here the murder weapon isn’t a gun, it’s a Mitsubishi Galant,” Richardson said. “There’s only one bullet and it’s 3,000 pounds. That man had absolute control from the time he got in the car and fired it up to when he fled, leaving Ben Van Handel to die.”

Bakdash’s attorney, Joe Tamburino, said his client was guilty of the “serious crime” of criminal vehicular homicide but that he did not commit murder.

“He told you that he knew what he did,” Tamburino said to jurors, “He told you that he knows he’s going to pay for it. He told you he’s taking responsibility.”

Intent to kill

Richardson argued that by continuing to drive and accelerating his car after he struck the first pedestrians, Bakdash committed intentional and premeditated murder.

“One shot might not be premeditation but boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, at some point you crossover from intent into premeditation.” Richardson said, rhythmically thumping the half-wall barrier of the jury box with his hand’s heel. “After pulling the trigger he didn’t have to fire it again and again and again, and that’s what he did by driving down and hitting one person and another and another.”

Tamburino disputed the state’s portrayal, arguing that Bakdash steered away from the first victim, A.J. Epperson, and that if he intended to commit murder, Epperson would have been “pinned” against the embankment wall.

“Even if you say to yourself, ‘Mr. Bakdash knew he was barreling down the sidewalk and hitting people,’ even that doesn’t give you the intent to kill,” Tamburino told the jury. “There is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Bakdash knew any of those people or wanted to hurt any of those people.”

The prosecution worked to establish Bakdash’s intent to kill through several pieces of circumstantial evidence—including his decision to drive the wrong way down a one-way street and to accelerate his car—along with the testimony of Brandon Bordeau, Bakdash’s friend who bought and stowed his damaged Mitsubishi Galant.

“[Bakdash] told me that he had intentionally run down some people he'd had an argument with in a bar,” Bordeau testified last week. “He told me he intended to run down his victims and kill all of them.”

Richardson said this was proof of premeditation and that the defense would try to discredit Bordeau as a result.

“The defendant told everybody something different, and sometimes he told the same people something different, and he told Brandon Bordeau, ‘I intended to kill,’” Richardson said. “Brandon Bordeau didn’t kill anybody. Brandon Bordeau is apparently going to be the scapegoat: It’s always somebody else’s fault, it’s Brandon Bordeau’s fault.”

Tamburino acknowledged the prosecution’s scapegoat accusation but said that Bordeau was an unreliable witness and questioned the state’s failure to explore inconsistencies in Bordeau’s testimony.

“First of all, the guy that you drink beer with and the guy that you smoke dope with and the guy you go on a paper route with while you’re smoking dope,” Tamburino said, , “nobody talks like, ‘I intended to kill all four victims or all victims.’ The everyday language would not be that.”

'Tragedy and carnage'

Richardson spoke in stark, emotional language, describing Van Handel as “a student getting ready to graduate” and implying that Bakdash’s moral failing in not giving himself up to police tainted his defense.

“There was one young man who was dying and two seriously injured young women, but the defendant didn’t stay, didn’t turn himself in, didn’t submit himself for blood alcohol testing,” Richardson said. “Who was it who had control over his own body fluids? Who had control over his Mitsubishi Gallant, the murder weapon? One man, one man had control over that evidence and kept it under wraps as long as he could.”

Richardson read off the names of the twenty-somethings who witnessed Bakdash’s crime and listed the bars they were leaving.

“[They were] at a club whose name sounds so cliched or so innocent now: They’re at the Kitty Kat Club,” Richardson said. “All these young people whose lives are going to come together in tragedy and carnage.”

'That guy was so drunk'

During the closing statements, attorneys debated Bakdash’s level of intoxication, which plays a role in determining whether he was capable of forming an intent to commit murder. Bakdash claimed he had consumed 18 to 25 drinks, though bartenders at the Library Bar said he was only moderately intoxicated.

Tamburino pointed to the $1 beer specials at the Library.

“For $20, basically, you could get loaded at this bar—that’s how cheap the liquor is here,” he said. “Mr. Bakdash was drunk.”

Bakdash’s friend, Matt Damman, who rode in the passenger seat during the fatal collision, claimed Bakdash only had about six drinks. 

Richardson said that Bakdash’s ability to drive home to Roseville without incident was evidence of his relative sobriety.

Tamburino disputed the point, noting that “there are people who can drink but still not notice when they do.”

“You say, ‘That guy was so drunk—how’d he make it home?’” Tamburino said. “Sometimes our bodies go on autopilot and still make it home.”