Disgraced US bishop denies knowing he hit a pedestrian in hit-and-run

0 Comments | AFP, February, 2004

PHOENIX, United States (AFP) — A US Catholic bishop accused of killing a pedestrian in his car and fleeing the scene of the accident, expressed remorse but denied knowing he had struck a human being.

Bishop Thomas O'Brien, who was head of the diocese of Phoenix in the western state of Arizona, is the first American bishop to be charged with a felony after the crash on June 14 last year left carpenter Jim Lee Reed, 43, dead.

"I just felt terrible about this," O'Brien told a packed courtroom during his trial in his first public comments on the asccident that ended his career.

"(Reed) was a stranger to me, but he was a friend and family to others," he said.

The former bishop said he never saw what hit his windshield, and that he never thought about...