Driver of pickup charged with murder in bicyclists' deaths

DETROIT (AP) — A Michigan prosecutor filed murder charges Thursday against the 50-year-old driver of a pickup truck that struck a group of bicyclists out for a casual ride, killing five of them and seriously injuring four others.

Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey Getting charged Charles Pickett Jr. of Battle Creek with five counts of second-degree murder and four counts of reckless driving in the crash Tuesday in Cooper Township north of Kalamazoo.

Getting added that he will wait on reports from state police crime lab "before I tell anyone what was or was not in his system at the time."

Often, in suspected drunken driving cases, blood samples of the drivers are taken for testing to determine how much — if any — alcohol is in that person's system.

Police said they had received complaints about a pickup being driven erratically and were searching for it minutes before the crash on the two-lane road.