Emily Patrick

epatrick@citizen-times.com

An Asheville man found guilty of intentionally causing 12 car wrecks was sentenced to a year in prison Thursday.

The court also ordered the man, Byron Fulghum, 27, to pay $45,363.08 in restitution to insurance companies and victims.

He was found guilty of six felony counts of insurance fraud, four misdemeanor counts of injury to personal property, four misdemeanor counts of assault with a deadly weapon and four misdemeanor counts of reckless driving to endanger.

Fulghum's maximum sentence is 34 months in prison.

The maximum sentence for the insurance fraud charges alone could have landed Fulghum in prison for more than eight years.

District Attorney Todd Williams said the prosecution was able to establish Fulghum intentionally caused the crashes because he recorded videos of the wrecks with a camera attached to the dashboard of his Ford Focus and posted them on Youtube.

"It all pretty much came down to did he intentionally cause the accidents or not, and with the dash-cam video that he himself produced, we basically were able to show that to the jurors," he said. "It appeared that he had 'hunting grounds,' he was familiar with the traffic patterns and what not, and I think that was another key fact for the jury."

Williams said he frequented areas with complex traffic patterns, such as Long Shoals Road.

"Fortunately, none of the victims were seriously injured, and that was miraculous," Williams said.

The victims include a 74-year-old woman whose car flipped and the owner of a Subaru Forester that sustained $7,000 in damages.

These wrecks were captured in the dash-cam videos, which led detectives to Fulghum.

On March 26, 2015, Travis Barkley, a detective with the Asheville Police Department, drove past an accident on Interstate 240 involving Fulghum and another motorist, according to a search warrant. That evening, Barkley wrote, "a concerned citizen showed detective Barkley a dash-cam video they found on YouTube of what they interpreted as a subject intentionally causing a traffic accident."

Williams first learned about the accidents in a similar way. A Las Vegas man saw the videos on Youtube and wrote him a note on Twitter. However, the APD was already investigating when he inquired about the videos, he said.

Charges added in deliberate wreck case

Man accused of causing wrecks declines plea deals