By Jeff Lehr
jlehr@joplinglobe.com
A Joplin man was assessed suspended sentences Monday for two felony assaults stemming from an illegal-racing accident last year near Carterville that injured a Carthage woman and two of her children.
David F. Gillespie, 62, 324 W. 45th St., was assessed consecutive seven-year prison terms on two convictions for second-degree assault at a hearing before Circuit Judge Gayle Crane in Jasper County Circuit Court.
But the judge suspended execution of the sentences and placed Gillespie on probation for five years, ordering him to serve 10 days in the Jasper County Jail, beginning Friday.
Gillespie was driving a westbound Porsche and racing a yellow Ford Mustang at a high rate of speed on Aug. 23 of last year on Highway 171. He lost control of the Porsche, and it ran into the rear of a Dodge Durango driven by Bradley J. Schrader, 33, of Carthage, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
The impact caused Schrader’s vehicle to run off the road and overturn.
Schrader’s wife, Valerie A. Schrader, then 28, and their children, Alexander Schrader, 8, and Alexandria Schrader, 7, were injured and taken to a hospital. The state patrol listed Alexander Schrader’s injuries as serious, the mother’s as moderate and the daughter’s as minor.
Gillespie was charged with two counts of felony assault based on the relative seriousness of the injuries to the son and mother. A breath test administered to Gillespie showed his blood-alcohol content to be 0.158 percent a little more than an hour after the accident, according to court records. The legal threshold for intoxication is 0.08 percent in Missouri.
The Mustang escaped contact with the other vehicles and left the scene before officers arrived.
Gillespie pleaded guilty in May to both counts in a plea agreement with the Jasper County prosecutor’s office that would have limited the prison time he might have been assessed to no more than five years on one count and two years on the other.
The judge rejected the terms of the plea agreement in suspending the sentence and placing the defendant on probation, giving Gillespie seven years on each count and running the terms consecutively to provide additional incentive for him to abide by the terms of probation.
