RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — An airman with the 86th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron will serve one month in jail and lose a stripe for his role in a fatal motor vehicle crash that killed a German motorcyclist.
Charles McCollum II, reduced in rank to technical sergeant, pleaded guilty in a court-martial this week at Ramstein to one count of negligent homicide.
The charge stems from a June 15, 2013, accident near Waldmohr in which McCollum turned left into the path of Karsten Bauerfeld’s oncoming motorcycle, Capt. Grethe Hahn, a senior trial counsel at Ramstein and the lead prosecutor for the government, said in an interview Thursday. While braking hard to avoid a collision, Bauerfeld, 45, from Hütschenhausen, flipped over his bike and struck the back passenger door of McCollum’s sedan. He died at the scene, Hahn said.
An aggravating circumstance in the case was that McCollum had been drinking the day of the accident. He testified under oath that he had consumed four beers throughout the morning while attending a squadron golf tournament and luncheon on Ramstein, where he worked as a C-130 maintainer, Hahn said.
After the event, McCollum drove to a friend’s house off base to pick up his children, spending about an hour there, Hahn said. The accident occurred on his way home at about 3 in the afternoon. “He sees an oncoming car and he also sees the motorcyclist,” Hahn said. “He lets the oncoming car go and turns in front of” the motorcyclist.
The German police told Air Force investigators there had been three previous accidents at the same intersection — L355 turning onto L354 — in the past three years, including a fatality, Hahn said.
McCollum’s blood-alcohol content was an estimated 0.067 at the time of the accident, below the legal limit to be criminally liable for drunken driving under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Hahn said.
The Air Force alleged that McCollum’s decision to drink and drive was conduct that brought discredit upon the armed forces. “If members of the public were to hear” an airman had been drinking and driving and killed a man, that might tend to lower their opinion of the Air Force, she said.
As part of a pretrial agreement, McCollum’s commander agreed not to consider the outcome of his court-martial when he comes up for re-enlistment in June, Hahn said. McCollum has been in the Air Force for 18 years.
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