Miami Herald - May 9, 2005
Sara Olkon, solkon@herald.com

Math teacher Robert Gimilaro says he was in a "medical fog" during a near-crash with a Hollywood police car.

The state has charged the Miami-Dade schoolteacher who lives in Hollywood with aggravated assault on a law-enforcement officer -- a felony that carries at least three years in prison.

Gimilaro said he never tried to hurt Officer Mark Goodnow. Moreover, Goodnow never complained of any injury. In his report, he wrote only that Gimilaro attempted to strike him with the left side of his vehicle and that he was forced into the opposite lane of traffic.

Goodnow could not be reached for comment.

To Gimilaro's lawyer, Broward assistant public defender William Lanphear, the current felony charge of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer is overkill.

"This law is for guys who are truly criminals, for the ones threatening the lives of police officers," Lanphear said. "This guy has full-blown AIDS and was on a ton of pills. I don't think he even knew he was sitting in a car.

"In hindsight, he knows he shouldn't have been driving. At the time, he was in a trance."

Ron Ishoy, Broward state attorney's office spokesman, said prosecutors had not been given the reports by defense counsel and would not discuss the case.

Lanphear hopes to keep his client out of prison by arguing Gimilaro was in a state of involuntary intoxication brought on by a combination of pain medications his doctors had been prescribing for his crushing joint pain.

Gimilaro's condition had been steadily deteriorating for about two years after his HIV diagnosis in 1999. He continued teaching pre-calculus at William H. Turner Technical Arts Senior High in Miami, until he found himself stumbling in class.

After the Feb. 22, 2004, arrest, the 52-year-old man stopped teaching and driving altogether.

On the day of the incident, Gimilaro recalls taking the narcotic Percocet, the anticonvulsant Neurontin and some Benadryl for his allergies.

The combined effects of taking different drugs at the same time is often underestimated by users, said Dr. Eugene Ramsay, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Miami.

"It could have altered his judgment," he said.

Sometime early that evening, he got behind the wheel of his Pontiac Grand Am to pick up cigarettes.

Goodnow wrote that he saw Gimilaro speeding south down 56th Avenue and tried to pull him over.

The officer said the defendant tried to hit him with his car, sped from the scene, then rammed into a parked, unoccupied Volvo.

Gimilaro was treated for injuries and jailed.

He is due back in court on May 20.

The thought of returning to jail terrifies Gimilaro.

"I would rather die," he said.

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