A former veterinarian already facing murder and assault charges in a fatal west Mobile crash could see his bond revoked after being involved in a separate wreck hundreds of miles away in north Alabama.
Hunter Quillen Coan, 46, is accused of killing 68-year-old John Charles Lindell, a retired probation officer, in a crash in west Mobile while allegedly under the influence of prescription drugs. That case has been pending since the spring, when a Mobile district judge allowed Coan to live with family in Haleyville while undergoing court-ordered drug testing and permitted him to retain his driver’s license during the case.
Prosecutors say Coan was involved in another traffic accident near Haleyville in late September, and a Mobile assistant district attorney has since asked the court to revoke his $75,000 bond in the pending murder case. The motion cites information from the district attorney’s office in Marion County, where the more recent crash occurred, alleging that Coan ran other vehicles off the road and appeared impaired at the scene.
The prosecutor’s motion argues that allowing Coan to remain free on bond poses a serious risk to public safety, given the nature of the pending charges against him and the circumstances of the more recent incident. Court filings indicate the state is treating the north Alabama crash as evidence that the conditions of his release are no longer adequate to protect the community.
Coan’s defense attorney has pushed back strongly against that characterization, filing a response disputing nearly every fact presented by the prosecution. According to the defense filing, the September crash involved only Coan’s vehicle and was caused by a sudden onset of severe stomach pain and cramping, not impairment from alcohol or drugs. The defense motion states that troopers who responded to the scene found no evidence of impairment, and that a Marion County deputy who evaluated Coan at the time reached the same conclusion. The defense also noted that Coan had undergone drug and alcohol testing the day before the crash and was scheduled for additional testing afterward as part of his existing release conditions.
Based on those facts, Coan’s attorney argued that the defendant should remain free on bond while the underlying murder case continues to move through the court system. A Mobile County judge was expected to rule on the bond revocation question at a hearing held shortly after the motions were filed, a decision that will determine whether Coan remains free ahead of trial on the more serious charges stemming from the fatal west Mobile crash.
The case has drawn continued attention in Mobile since the original crash, both for the unusual circumstances of a licensed veterinarian facing a murder charge and for the ongoing legal debate over how much freedom defendants accused of causing a fatal DUI-related crash should retain while awaiting trial.