A man convicted of driving his car through a crowd that had gathered to watch a zombie-themed parade last year, seriously injuring a spectator, apologized in court Friday.

“First of all, I very much want to emphasize how sorry I am to have hurt Ms. Campbell,” Matthew Pocci Jr. said in sign-language during a sentencing hearing in San Diego Superior Court. “I know it was totally unintentional.”

Pocci, who is deaf, was referring to Cynthia Campbell, whose arm was run over during the incident.

A jury last month found Pocci, 47, guilty of felony reckless driving resulting in great bodily injury. He made his comments just before a judge placed him on probation for three years and ordered him to complete 60 days of home detention with electronic monitoring.


Judge Amalia Meza also ordered Pocci to complete 120 hours of volunteer work and to surrender his driver’s license for at least a year. If he is not accepted into the home detention program, he will have to serve 30 days in county jail.

“It all started because Mr. Pocci did not exercise patience and wait for the Zombie Walk parade to be over,” the judge said.

Security and cellphone videos showed that Pocci inched forward slowly and then accelerated, hitting more than one person in a downtown San Diego intersection.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Anthony Campagna, who had asked that Pocci be sentenced to 120 days in custody, said Friday that the defendant had never accepted responsibility for his actions.


“He could have killed someone,” the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney Ashby Sorensen said Pocci had always maintained he was innocent but was remorseful about what happened.

The attorney argued during the trial that Pocci became frightened by members of the crowd, some of whom sat on his car, and that he had tried to get away to protect himself and his passengers, including a 9-year-old boy.

“His actions caused the crowd to turn on him,” the judge said at sentencing. “He became frightened by the reaction of the crowd.”


dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Littlefield writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune