Campbell drunk driver charged with murder

A woman who died last Thursday when her allegedly drunk stepfather struck her with his pickup truck in the driveway of their home in Campbell was 41-year-old Leslie Carroll, according to the Santa Clara County medical examiner’s office.

The driver of the truck, Filip Handl, was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of murder in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose before Judge Allison Danner, who ordered him held without bail as is typical in murder cases, Assistant District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro said.

Handl’s next appearance in court will be at a plea hearing on April 10, Gibbons-Shapiro said. Handl was arrested and booked into the county jail Thursday on suspicion of murder after a test revealed his blood-alcohol level was well above the legal limit, Campbell police said.

Police were dispatched at 4:47 p.m. Thursday about a reported drunken driver who had struck a pedestrian on Lovell Avenue east of South San Tomas Aquino Road in Campbell.

Officers arrived to see find Carroll, Handl’s stepdaughter, not breathing and without a pulse lying underneath the front of a full-sized GMC pickup truck in the driveway of a home where she and Handl lived, according to police.

Personnel from the Santa Clara County Fire Department inflated airbags under the truck to raise it off of her, but attempts to save her were unsuccessful, police said.

Police said that it did not appear that Handl intended to drive over Carroll and possibly had intended to put the truck into reverse and drove forward onto her by mistake.

But detectives, after discussing the case with the district attorney’s office, decided to arrest him on suspicion of murder because he was legally intoxicated at the time and had a DUI conviction in the 1970s, according to police.

Police also took into account evidence recovered at the scene and statements from witnesses and Handl himself, who admitted to having driven drunk before and knowing it was dangerous, police said.