14 DAY TRIAL // A Michigan man who was on a road-trip across the country with his girlfriend and his 93-year-old mother refused to stop and notify authorities when the girlfriend unexpectedly died in the passenger's seat.
Ray Tomlinson, 62, was reportedly driving his 31-year-old girlfriend home to Michigan from Arizona after she checked herself out of a mental health facility, and he also brought his elderly wheelchair-bound mother along for the journey.
What was supposed to be a regular road-trip from Arizona to Michigan turned into an awkward experience for the man, after his much younger girlfriend died during the 1,700 mile (2,735 km) journey. Determined not to leave her corpse alone in a random hospital morgue and convinced that he had 48 hours to report the death, Tomlinson chose to drive for another 24 hours and get her home to Michigan.
Initially, he thought the woman had simply fallen asleep while they were driving through Texas or Oklahoma, but he eventually realized she had passed away. Instead of calling the police, the man decided to keep driving across the country on account of the fact that he “cared to much to stop” and because he worried that if he stopped, authorities would arrest him and seize his van.
“They would have impounded my vehicle, they would have probably incarcerated me to do an investigation and I had a 93-year-old woman in my car that I needed to get home,” he told The Detroit Free Press.
Police have not determined a cause of death yet, but they suspect the woman might have overdosed because she was found with an empty bottle of OxyContin.
Apparently, she had several drug prescriptions filled before she left the mental facility on May 28, including for 30 OxyContin, but Tomlinson failed to suspect anything was wrong after they made a stop for gas in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she used the restroom.
After the stop in Flagstaff, an employee at the mental health facility she had been in Arizona called the woman's cellphone to check on her and ask her if she had made a follow-up appointment in Michigan. Tomlinson answered and explained the situation, but refused to contact the police although the caller urged him to.
By the time the man got to Warren, Illinois, the woman’s body had started to decompose. When police arrived to the scene, she was in the front passenger seat still wearing the seatbelt.
Police are still investigating what happened, but Tomlinson has not been charged and foul play is not suspected.
The man told officers that the woman was homeless when he first met her last year and he helped her to get back on her feet, but she had a history of drug abuse and returned to Arizona several times to seek help.