A man who prosecutors said drove drunk and fatally struck a pedestrian in University Heights, then fled and tried to cover up his involvement was convicted of murder and other charges this week.
Brandon Allen Janik, 38, ran a red light and struck 47-year-old Joshua Gilliland as the victim was crossing El Cajon Boulevard at the three-way intersection of Normal Street and El Cajon and Park boulevards on June 10, 2023.
Paramedics took Gilliland to a hospital, where he died four days later. Gilliland was a bartender at Cheers on Adams Avenue, and friends said he was walking to work when he was struck.
In the days after hitting Gilliland, prosecutors say, Janik had the smashed windshield on his vehicle replaced and claimed to his insurance company that the car was damaged when he backed the vehicle into a pole while parking it at his apartment.
Janik was arrested for the fatal crash about three months later. Because he had a prior DUI conviction — stemming from a 2016 rollover crash off state Route 52 in which he’d been seriously injured — prosecutors charged him with murder.
Along with murder, the San Diego Superior Court jury found Janik guilty late Thursday afternoon of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, hit-and-run, and several charges related to filing a false insurance claim.
Deputy District Attorney Hailey Williams told jurors that after drinking at bars in Hillcrest throughout the day, Janik was later found by bystanders passed out behind the wheel of a car stopped in the middle of University Avenue.
After Janik was pulled out of the vehicle, he told the bystanders attending to him, “Thank you. You have no idea how much you are helping me. I already have a DUI,” according to Williams.
Paramedics responded and assessed Janik. Williams said Janik assured the paramedics he would call an Uber or walk home, then waited until they left, drove off, and struck Gilliland a few minutes later.
Janik’s defense attorney, Justin Murphy, did not deny that Janik struck Gilliland, nor that he had a responsibility to stop after the crash. Instead, Murphy argued there was no proof Janik was intoxicated at the time.
“Up until his horrible decision to flee, no crime had been committed,” said Murphy, who explained that in the moment, his client “panicked, freaked out, and made a cowardly decision.”
Murphy argued that without any physical evidence of intoxication — such as blood or breath tests — the prosecution was relying on the observations of laypeople who made assumptions that Janik was drunk.
The attorney said the paramedics who encountered Janik were the only witnesses who were professionally trained to recognize the signs of intoxication and they did not notice any scent of alcohol on Janik, nor did they notice any bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, or an unsteady gait.
