Jury selection begins Tuesday in Macomb Circuit Court for a former Warren police officer charged with manslaughter for killing two men while driving his patrol car at more than 90 miles an hour, marking the start of what will likely be an emotional trial.
Cedric Hayden Jr., 34, and Dejuan Pettis, 33, were in a SUV Sept. 30, 2024, waiting on Schoenherr Road to turn left on Prospect Street just north of Eight Mile when then-Warren Officer James Burke struck their vehicle while going 93.8 mph, accident reconstruction expert Macomb County Sheriff’s Deputy Joe Bosek testified at a preliminary examination in June 2025. He’d been going 110 mph just seconds earlier.
Video of the crash shows Pettis and Hayden’s SUV starting to turn left off of Schoenherr at about 5 a.m. as Burke’s patrol car flies down Schoenherr, slamming into the side of the SUV.
Bosek said Burke had been driving at 114 mph five seconds before impact, 111.4 mph two seconds before the crash, 108.8 one second before the crash and 93.8 mph at impact. Bosek testified that Burke started “lightly braking” 2.6 seconds before impact and fully braked at 0.7 seconds before impact, when the anti-lock system engaged. The speed limit on the road is 40 mph.
Burke was responding to an area on Schoenherr where license plate readers had picked up the plate of a stolen vehicle minutes before. Burke did not have his lights and sirens on.
Hayden was driving, and Pettis was his passenger. Hayden and Pettis were close friends; both were autoworkers, according to family members. Hayden worked for Chrysler, and Pettis worked at General Motors, they said.
Burke is charged with two counts of manslaughter with a motor vehicle, a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and a count of a moving violation causing serious impairment of a body function and a count of willful neglect of duty, both misdemeanors.
He was ordered to stand trial in August last year following a lengthy preliminary exam.
“How aggressively should officers pursue potential suspects?” asked Judge John Chmura with Warren’s 37th District Court before binding Burke over. “To me, that’s what this case is really about.”
After Burke was ordered to stand trial, Cedric Hayden Sr., whose son died, said Burke needs to go to jail.
“If my son had hit him in a car, he would go to jail,” he said. “Give my son the same respect as this officer.”
Attorneys for the Hayden and Pettis families, meanwhile, have sued the city of Warren and the two police officers involved in the crash for $100 million.
The lawsuit, filed in Macomb County Circuit Court, alleges negligence, gross negligence, along with willful and wanton misconduct by the two officers. It also accuses the officers and the city of negligent operation of a government-owned vehicle, and accuses the city of ownership liability.
kberg@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Trial begins for Warren cop who killed 2 in high-speed crash
Reporting by Kara Berg, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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