3 years after crash, trooper still recovering

Jen Lawson

Tuesday, April 20, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.

Former Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Bobby Kintzel recently returned to the stretch of U.S. 95 where three years ago he had been hit by a sport utility vehicle driven by a fleeing killer going more than 95 mph.

Sitting in his car on the shoulder of the highway near Flamingo Road, he said he stared at the traffic whizzing by and tried to make sense of the crash that left him with substantial injuries, including brain damage, but did not kill him.

"I was awed," 33-year-old Kintzel said Monday while sitting in the highway patrol's public information office, where he now works part time doing limited clerical work and helping out around the office. "If a vehicle is going 95 miles per hour, how is that person going to survive?"

Kintzel was given a 2 percent chance of surviving after the crash on April 21, 2001. He is awaiting the sentencing Wednesday -- the third anniversary of the wreck -- of Vornelius Phillips, the man who admitted to intentionally plowing into the trooper.

Phillips pleaded guilty in February to 10 felony charges including murder stemming from the slaying of a prostitute and attempted murder. He faces multiple life prison terms with or without parole.

Kintzel, a former Marine and athlete, said Phillips' sentencing will be like Kintzel's "game day, that will be like the Super Bowl and Game 7 of the Stanley Cup."

Phillips, 27, pleaded guilty to killing 49-year-old Ivy Shunstrom in a downtown motel room and then hijacking a taxicab at McCarran International Airport to escape police. A woman who was inside the cab was seriously injured when she jumped from the moving car.

When traffic stopped on the Las Vegas Beltway, Phillips carjacked a sport utility vehicle and led police on a chase onto U.S. 95.

Kintzel was on the highway patrol's fatal crash investigation team and that morning he was in his office doing paperwork when a call came out for any available troopers to assist with the chase. He and his partner decided to help and headed to the highway.

Kintzel was laying down metal spikes to puncture the SUV's tires when Phillips swerved and struck him intentionally.

He said he survived because he had everything going for him in terms of physics -- the vehicle hit his body's "center mass," Kintzel said. If he were taller or smaller, he believes he wouldn't have survived.

When he was brought into University Medical Center's trauma unit he rated zero on a scale from one to 10, he said, earning him the nickname "Zero" among the children he helps coach with the Las Vegas Rebels Youth Hockey Association.

Kintzel was in a medically induced coma for two weeks. He remained in University Medical Center and in rehabilitation facilities about a year. Dawn, his wife since October 1999, took care of him when he returned home, he said.

"She did everything for me," he said. "Everything."

He had to re-learn skills people take for granted: how to walk, talk, feed himself, read, write, drive a car.

Kintzel has endured 22 surgeries. The crash left him with a limp and with scars all over his body. But the deepest scars are ones that are not visible.

The part of his brain that controls cognitive skills such as reading and writing has been removed. He functions at a fourth grade level, his mother Juanita Kuhn Matusky said, and the brain injury has left him with a speech impediment that he is trying to overcome with help from a speech therapist.

Activities he used to love -- protecting the public as a trooper, discussing philosophy with his mother and playing sports -- are out of his grasp and it's likely they always will be, his mother said. Even Coca-Cola tastes like medicine, he said.

"We lost our Bobby and he knows he lost himself," Matusky said. "He's in his own prison. We're learning to redefine what normal is in our lives."

Kintzel said he wanted to be a motivational speaker even before his wreck but he "didn't have anything to talk about." Now he feels he can use what happened to him to inspire other people.

He keeps a black and white photo of Phillips, his would-be killer, in his wallet as a motivator.

"I see that and I go, 'Nice try, Phillips. Nice try,' " Kintzel said.

Another photo that inspires him is of him in his hospital bed, unconscious, with tubes going into his body.

Although Kintzel appears to be positive, there are glimpses of anger that his mother said was never there before. His temper flares when talking about Phillips, whom he said he can't forgive.

"He can find Jesus, he can become born again," Kintzel said. "I don't care. There's no way I'm ever going to forgive him. Never, N-E-V-E-R, capital, underline."

Compared to how he was right after the wreck, he's doing excellent, she said. But compared to how he was before the wreck, he's not doing well at all.

"It's tough for him. It's sheer torture," she said. "It breaks my heart."

Kintzel keeps mementos of the crash in his desk, the crash report and a box of police photographs.

In a drawer on the right side of his desk, he keeps a plastic bag containing the dark blue NHP uniform he was wearing the day of the wreck, which was cut from his body. He also has the notebook he carried that day, his underwear, even his socks suspenders.

On the wall facing his desk he has affixed the section of his uniform that holds his highway patrol badge and name tag. He was a trooper for six years before his injury. He no longer is a law enforcement officer.

Most marriages in which one person suffers brain damage end in divorce, Kintzel said. He and Dawn, an interior designer, "are sticking together in sickness and in health," he said.

Her son isn't the same man he was when he married Dawn, however, Matusky said.

"I look at him now and I see him anywhere from the age of 12 to 20. (Dawn) didn't know him at that time," she said. "The old Bobby just is not there."

Kintzel said he considered suicide many times, but he said he realized "it would be like finishing what Phillips tried to do. If you commit suicide, you give up, you quit."

He said he learned in Marines Corps boot camp to "never wave the surrender flag."

Kintzel returned to work part time in February and is assigned to the public information office, assisting Trooper Angie Wolff, highway patrol spokeswoman. The highway patrol has offered him a full-time civilian position with the PIO office, but he is not ready to work full-time yet. He is paid about two-thirds of the rate he was receiving prior to his disability.

Kintzel was recently evaluated by a battery of doctors for his workers' compensation case.

Workers' compensation is covering Kintzel's medical expenses but it isn't compensating him for pain and suffering and future losses, his mother said.

His attorney, Tim Titolo, filed a lawsuit on Kintzel's behalf against the Yellow and Whittlesea Blue cab companies, alleging negligence and improper hiring, training and supervising of drivers.

After killing Shunstrom, Phillips got into a cab and told the driver to take him anywhere and said he needed to get away quickly. The driver suspected the man had just committed a crime, took him to the airport and made him get out of the cab, Titolo said.

Phillips spotted a cab with the engine running and the driver putting luggage in the trunk and got behind the wheel. The female passenger jumped from the car moments later and was injured.

Phillips ditched the cab when traffic slowed and carjacked the driver of an SUV which he hit Kintzel with moments later.

If the first cab driver had called police after growing suspicious that Phillips had just committed a crime and if the second driver had not left the keys in the ignition of his cab, the chain of events leading to Kintzel getting struck would not have occurred, Titolo said.

He said that if parents can get charged with child endangerment when their cars get stolen after they leave the keys in the ignition and their children inside, the cab companies could also be held liable in the Kintzel case.

Because of Kintzel's injuries, he didn't seek legal help right away and the suit was filed nine months after the two-year statute of limitations had expired. The suit was dismissed at the district court level and Titolo filed an appeal with the state supreme court.

The statute of limitations can be set aside in certain cases, including ones in which the plaintiff was "incompetent" for a period of time, he said.

"That's my issue," Titolo said. "Does brain injury and brain damage equal incompetence for purposes of (overriding) the statute of limitations?"

If Kintzel wins the suit, it will help cover his medical bills, which Titolo said are probably approaching $1 million, as well pain and suffering. It would also set a precedent in how the court sees brain injury cases, which is important to Kintzel, Titolo said.

But Kintzel and his family will never get what they want the most -- the old Bobby.

"Nobody is going to pay him for being a different person," Titolo said.

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