Officer Testifies Against Man Charged with Running Him Over

A Manassas Park Police officer told a district court judge that he has no memory of drawing his weapon and firing inside a suspect’s vehicle, or the moments after he was run over by the suspect’s car.

Officer Brian Sproule took the stand Thursday and testified during the preliminary hearing of  Robert Daniel Washington, of Manassas, who faces two felony charges in connection with the September incident in the Brandy Station neighborhood in Manassas Park.

Sproule sat clothed in a dark blue suit, his badge hung neatly around his neck and over his tie. His hair was cut so low that it was merely a shadow on his scalp, which bore a small, Y-shaped laceration—the only physical reminder of the 15 staples he received after he was struck.  

The prosecution’s other witness, William Henry Hickey, is the tow truck driver who summoned police to Sandstone Way and Cartwright Court in the early morning hours of Sept. 4.

Hickey said he was in the area because a Brandy Station homeowner’s association member called him to tow away a suspicious vehicle parked in a resident-designated space.

Hickey said he got out of his roll-back truck and walked up to a black Lincoln where he noticed two men inside with what appeared to be marijuana.

He told them to move, then got back in his car and called 911. The suspect, who Hickey identified as Washington in court, was outside of the black car, pacing, Hickey told the court.

Hickey said he followed the Lincoln out of the parking space and as it circled back around to the same area, where it stopped beside a white Buick driven by Washington.

Sproule arrived on the scene and spoke to Hickey before walking over to the suspect’s vehicle that was now parked in the same parking spot where the black Lincoln had been, Hickey said.

“Initially, I didn’t know what he was saying; then he started screaming,” Hickey said. “He continued yelling at him. It was constant. He kept yelling, ‘Stop. Get out of the vehicle. Stop. Get out of the vehicle.’”

Next thing I know, the car sped backward and hit a bunch of cars.”

Sproule went around to the passenger side of the vehicle and fired his gun. The suspect put his hands up in an “I give up” motion, Hickey said.

“His hands dropped and he was gone. He throwed the car in gear and ran over top of the officer,” Hickey said. “I watched the car go up in the air, twice. Front wheel, back wheel.”

It looked as if the suspect was going to put the car in reverse and run over Sproule again, but Hickey said he blocked the car in with his tow truck, jumped out and began cursing at the suspect and threatened to hit him with the pick axe he had in the truck.

 “I said, ‘You already ran over him, he’s down,’” Hickey said.

The suspect got out of the car, walked a little ways and then fell down, he said. He’d been shot in the abdomen. Washington spent a week in Fairfax Hospital receiving treatment for his wounds.

Sproule was hospitalized at the same hospital for three days where he received staples in his head. He suffered bruising and general soreness, but for the most part, he has no lingering injuries, he told Judge Peter Steketee, who presided over the hearing.

Sproule showed the judge the scar on his head during the testimony and told him he remembers the incident up until the point when the suspect put the car in drive.

“I have some very specific memories of the incident,” he told the court.  “I remember his vehicle approaching my position.”

Hickey said Sproule was wearing a black vest when he arrived at the scene. “After he ran over the officer, it was flipped up over his face and his eyes were rolled back," the tow truck driver said.

“The first memory I have is in the ambulance," the office said. "I recognized the paramedics as being ours. I thought it was some kind of weird dream."

After hearing from a third witness, Manassas Park Police Det. Howard Perry, and the closing arguments of the lawyers in the case, Steketee decided there is probable cause for the case to be referred to the grand jury in circuit court. The jury meets May 7.

Washington remains in custody on charges of attempted murder of a police officer and malicious wounding of a law enforcement officer.

Steketee granted a motion by the assistant commonwealth's attorney Will Jarvis to not prosecute Washington on his two misdemeanor charges: leaving the scene of an accident and drug possession.