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Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008 Officer was speeding when he hit Clarksburg boy, report says by Nathan Carrick | Staff Writer
Laurie DeWitt/The Gazette
The April 29 scene in Clarksburg as investigators study the site where a police cruiser struck a 12-year-old boy on Stringtown Road.
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The off-duty county police officer whose cruiser struck and injured a 12-year-old Clarksburg boy in April was traveling 26 mph over the speed limit at the time of the collision, according to a report released Thursday by the Montgomery County Police Collision Reconstruction Unit.
The report states that had Officer Jason R. Cokinos been traveling at the posted 30 mph limit, Luis Jovel Jr. would not have been hit, even though the boy was near the middle of Stringtown Road when he was struck.
A supplemental report is due out in about two weeks that will include a decision by the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office on whether criminal charges will be filed, said Lt. Paul Starks, director of the county police department's Media Services Division.
Detective J.R. Howard concludes in the report: "Time distance formulas showed that if Cokinos had been traveling 30 miles per hour, the collision would not have occurred. While this investigator finds that Jovel was illegally in the roadway at the time of the collision, Cokinos is contributory due to the calculated speed of speed of [sic] the vehicle."
Cokinos is assigned to 3rd District in Silver Spring. He could not be reached for comment Thursday.
James F. Shalleck, Cokinos' attorney, had not heard about the report.
"We're going to look into all aspects of this, but at this point there's no comment," he said.
Jovel's neck was fractured in the collision, the report states. He was flown to Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in critical condition, police reported. He was then transferred to an intensive care center in Baltimore in June, Carlyn Patterson-Breese, assistant principal of Rocky Hill Middle School, said at the time. Jovel is a seventh-grader at the Clarksburg school this year. Patterson-Breese has visited the family several times since the incident. Attempts to learn the boy's current condition were unsuccessful Thursday.
After a brief time of administrative leave, Cokinos is back on full active duty, Starks said.
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