San Diego DUI lawyer news

On New Year's Eve, Cory Byron called from the road and left a disturbing message on his sister's phone.

“Jen,” he said, “I want you to know I'm doing this because I have too much pain in my life.”

By the time Jennifer Byron heard the spoken suicide note and called 911, her younger brother either had jumped, or was about to jump, from the San Diego-Coronado Bridge with a police dog.

In reality, Cory Byron, 27, had been falling since his early 20s, when a catastrophic mountain bike accident required major facial surgery and a plate implanted in his head.

In 2003, he was hospitalized at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside for a “bipolar manic episode,” said Jennifer Byron and Michael Young, a family friend with whom Cory lived for five months as he recuperated that year.

In 2005, when he was living with his sister, Cory was again hospitalized for the same problem.

Jennifer, who lives in Rancho Peñasquitos, told me that the manic episodes, which may have been triggered by the head injury, caused a host of problems, including dark thoughts that Cory had let down his family and his 6-year-old son.

If he took his medication, which cost him $400 a month, he'd be groggy in the mornings and miss work on a construction site.

If he failed to take the pills, he could stay up for as long as seven days, Jennifer said. Insomnia led to suicidal thoughts. Drinking helped him sleep and make it to work.

This vicious cycle evidently spun out of control on New Year's Eve when Cory Byron, a San Diego DUI drunken-driving suspect, led police on a chase from Oceanside to the landmark bridge. After Stryker, an Oceanside police dog, was dispatched to subdue Byron, the pursuit turned into a horror show.

After a struggle, Byron and Stryker went over the railing and plunged into the bay. Byron survived with a collapsed lung and other injuries; Stryker died instantly.

Was the dog attached by his teeth to the suicidal man?

Or did Byron seize the dog and leap with the intent of killing Stryker as well as himself?

The answer to that legal question remains unclear, but it hovers over a memorial service scheduled for today at Camp Pendleton for a loyal police dog who died in the line of duty.

Today's funeral promises to elicit strong emotions. To be sure, the 6-year-old dog will be sorely missed in the Oceanside Police Department. If the dog memorial is anything like one held in Long Beach three years ago, it will be well-attended – and it will tug hard at the heartstrings.

Lost in the public outpouring of sympathy for poor Stryker – and by extension the dog's handler, who had to run to the rail and watch his companion fall to his death – is sympathy for Byron, a man who was quite fond of dogs.

Young recalled how Byron liked to play with the family's Jack Russell terrier. “He loved animals,” Young said. In his view, “Cory would have never taken the dog over the bridge with him if the dog had not been attached to his arm.”

“We've always had dogs,” Jennifer Byron said – pit bulls and chocolate Labs.

In a cruel twist of irony, their mother is a dog groomer in Riverside County.

“Is there no compassion for mental illness?” Young asked me. “I don't want Cory to be portrayed as a monster.”

Sorry, that picture was the one the public drew into the vacuum of information about Byron.

From what I've gathered, Byron is not so much a bad man as a troubled man.

Obviously, he must pay for what happened on New Year's Eve. Whatever the cause, he's a danger to himself and others. He needs serious help, but not the demonizing he's received in the kangaroo court of public opinion.

Yes, he has been convicted of a California Drunk Driving / DUI, but that's his only criminal strike, said Anthony Solare, his San Diego DUI defense attorney. (The Byron family contacted San Diego DUI criminal lawyer Solare after he said on a TV show that the death of a dog should not be viewed as akin to murder.)

This recent run of misery is a far cry from June 2, 1996, when Cory N. Byron, a 16-year-old cadet in the Civil Air Patrol, earned a bronze medal of honor for his heroic action at the Redlands Air Show.

Here's how the citation reads:

“While working the flight line at the air show, Cadet Byron observed a small child break away from her mother, slip through the security fence and onto the aircraft taxiway. Realizing that an aircraft had just landed and was heading down the taxiway, Cadet Byron immediatedly rushed toward the child. As he reached the child, Cadet Byron could feel himself being pulled toward the aircraft with the spinning propeller only 20 to 25 feet away. With complete disregard for his own personal safety, he grabbed the child and carried her out of the way of the oncoming aircraft.”

Yes, that was a long time ago.

But on the day San Diego County celebrates the life of Stryker, maybe we have in our hearts a little prayer for a desperately sad man in a room at UCSD Medical Center, guarded by a police officer, soon to be arrested and taken into custoday for a San Diego DUI.