Drugged driving charge dropped against driver in 2012 fatal crash

Correction, Feb. 13: D.A. spokesman said he erred in reporting the DWAI charge was withdrawn. On Feb. 4, the defendant pleaded guilty to driving while ability impaired and was sentenced to six months in jail. See updated story.

Prosecutors have withdrawn charges of driving while impaired by drugs against the man who struck and killed a bicyclist on Middle Country Road in Calverton in November 2012.

William Slatton told police he was on methadone when the 2005 Toyota he was operating struck Brookhaven National Lab engineer Steven Kane, 57, on Nov. 1, 2012. Kane was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash.

Police said Slatton’s vehicle veered into oncoming traffic and onto the shoulder of the opposite lane, where it struck Kane. The BNL engineer was a bicycle racing enthusiast who biked every day during his lunch break, according to a coworker.

Slatton was initially charged with driving while ability impaired by drugs, aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle and with four counts of endangering the welfare of a child, because his four young children were passengers in his car at the time of the crash.

“The toxicology results of the defendant’s blood did not provide Vehicular Crimes Bureau prosecutors with the evidence necessary to prove our burden of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt as to the charge of driving while ability impaired,” Suffolk District Attorney spokesman Robert Clifford told RiverheadLOCAL last week.

Slatton had been in a methadone treatment program at the time of the accident.

In November, Slatton was arrested again, this time on charges of grand larceny and criminal possession of a stolen credit card, both felonies. He remains incarcerated in lieu of $35,000 cash bail and is next due back in court on those charges Feb. 5.

He is also facing a probation violation charges; he is on probation as a result of a guilty plea in 2007 to attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance.