Haverford police drop all charges against West Phila. man in fatal crash

He was back home, still dressed in the blue Cookie Monster sweatshirt that he wore a just a day earlier during the now infamous perp walk.

For Kenneth Woods, 21, this was the stuff of nightmares. Over the course of about 36 hours, he was identified as a prime suspect in a highly publicized case, paraded before the media, held on $1 million bail - and then suddenly set free.

"They had the wrong guy," he said on Friday, outside his mother's house and surrounded by relatives. "The whole thing was crazy."

The ordeal began Wednesday night, when Haverford police arrested him at his mother's house and accused him of being involved in the car crash that killed a Villanova senior and seriously injured the student's roommate.

On Thursday, he protested his innocence at his arraignment in Haverford Township. In interviews, family members vowed that he was home at the time of the crash. They volunteered to take lie-detector tests. They even offered a plausible explanation of how Woods' palm print and fingerprint ended up on the stolen SUV involved in the fatal crash.

In the end, they were right. Haverford police, in another news conference after another perp walk, acknowledged as much when they said Woods was free to go home.

Back on Aspen Street in West Philadelphia, Woods was again the center of attention, this time under far happier circumstances. A day earlier, his mother, Terry Cotton Woods, had described how her son had been thrown to the ground by police and had pleaded, "Can you tell me what's going on? Can you tell me what I did?"

Now she was hugging Woods. His fiancée was there, as was his 4-year-old son, Za'khi. His godfather, Robert Herdelin, had picked him up from jail Friday and the two had stopped to buy a birthday cake and balloon for Woods' fiancée, Victoria Walton. She is expecting their first child in March. "I haven't really been to sleep," Terry Cotton Woods said.

The arrest cost Woods his job at a McDonald's restaurant, which he had started on the same day as his arrest. He said he planned to ask for it back.

Woods said that he barely knew Donnie Sayers, who was arrested Thursday night on murder charges in the crash. Police said Sayers, 28, was driving a stolen SUV when he rear-ended the car driven by Daniel Giletta, 21. Giletta's roommate at Villanova, Frank "Patrick" DiChiara, 21, was still listed in critical condition Friday.

In offering an alibi for Woods, family members on Thursday said he may have helped Sayers fix a CD player in the stolen SUV shortly before the accident. Woods, however, denied that on Friday. He said he touched the car door on Tuesday night when Sayers pulled over to where Woods was hanging out with friends in West Philadelphia.

The fatal crash happened hours later, in the Bryn Mawr section of Haverford Township.

Woods said he did not even know about the accident when police arrested him. "They told me I was going to jail for third-degree murder. I didn't even know what they were talking about."

It was only later, in jail, when he saw himself on television and learned of the crash, that it all began to sink in.

"I was just lost," he said.

In addition to the handprint, police initially said they found a cell phone in the SUV containing a picture of a man they believed was Woods.

That too may have been an error. "I said 'That's not me,' " Woods said, adding that the cell phone was not his. "I was like, 'Can't y'all get the picture out of the phone and make it bigger?' "

Reflecting on the ordeal, Woods said he wasn't angry about what happened. He was just glad to be home with his family. "The police, they did what they had to do," he said. "I'm moving on."

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