Family's agony lingers in motorcyclist's tragic death

SPRING HILL — Alone in her tidy gray and white house, Anita McCain reads books about grief.

She reads them so she knows her pain is normal. So she knows what to expect when she feels like her husband might again walk in through the garage door wearing that leather jacket and boyish grin, or when Fridays pass without date nights at Nico's Restaurant and Bakery, or when his 68th birthday comes next week and he's not there.

Anita knows how her husband of 20 years, Henry F. McCain, died. She knows that authorities say a troubled, drug-addicted 21-year-old named Brittany Elizabeth Miles slammed into Henry's motorcycle as she fled from deputies.

But a month after his death, she still doesn't understand why. Anita and her family have questions about the young mother accused of murdering Henry, the Pasco sheriff's deputies involved in the incident and the investigators trying to determine what went so terribly wrong that day.

"We want some answers," Anita, 62, said as she sat at her dinner table and rolled a tear-soaked tissue between her fingers. "We believe really strongly this shouldn't have happened."

Henry was asleep when Anita left for her job in Pasco's public transportation division the morning of May 10. They didn't speak before she left.

Still, Anita can imagine her husband's final hours. Routine suited Henry. He was, in fact, a man who spent his entire professional life in funeral homes, consoling families at their worst moments. That takes a specific, consistent temperament. He did things a certain way.

So, she can guess he would have sat just off the kitchen in the chair next to the window. He would have eaten sliced bananas and Cheerios as he sipped strong coffee splashed with sugar and half and half. Henry would have read the newspaper and stared at the plastic smiling face tacked to the oak tree in his back yard. The eyes and nose and mouth were a silly gift from his daughter, Kellie McCain. It would have reminded him of her.

Then, Henry would have geared up, strapped on his helmet and slowly pulled his black 2009 Suzuki motorcycle out of their quiet Spring Hill neighborhood. He was going to meet a group of biker friends in Hudson to share coffee, maybe doughnuts and certainly a few stories.

Henry never made it.

Just after 7 a.m., two 23-year-old deputies had pulled Miles over on suspicion of driving under the influence in Hudson. Investigators say that two hours later, she escaped through the cruiser's open back window, nearly killed a deputy as she peeled out in her pickup and eventually smashed into Henry's motorcycle 7 miles north.

In the five hours before Miles was stopped, three people called 911 to report her erratic driving.

"I want to know what happened in those five hours," Kellie McCain said. "Did she stop somewhere and get more drugs to get high? Either way, why did it take so long for them to catch her?"

Deputies began looking for Miles after taking the first 911 call at 2:30 a.m., according to Pasco sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll, who says because of the ongoing internal affairs investigation he can't discuss many of the details surrounding that morning, the botched arrest or the pursuit.

At the DUI stop, reports say, Miles "released herself from the handcuffs." Kellie called what happened a "comedy of errors."

Perhaps above all their criticisms, though, the family objects to the chase. Why, they wonder, did deputies pursue Miles — arrested in Pasco two weeks earlier for possession of methamphetamine — at speeds up to 70 mph down a high-traffic highway?

"High-speed chases kill people," Kellie said, "and that's what happened."

In the months leading up to that morning, close friends and neighbors say, Miles worked as a stripper while her life collapsed into drugs and violence.

After she crashed into Henry McCain, authorities say, Miles sped off and stopped only when her damaged vehicle forced her off the road. "She ran over Henry like he was trash on the road," Anita said, "and kept on going."

"A good person was taken by a not-so-good person," said Kellie, who lives in Tennessee. "Good people don't become strippers and fight in parking lots and take meth and kill people."

Henry McCain, his family says, had never been in trouble. The 67-year-old Republican liked flea markets and the History Channel and thought Humphrey Bogart was cool.

Henry and his wife were both collectors. His plates painted with eagles sprinkle their walls.

From the way Henry whistled, Anita could tell his mood.

Motorcycles — he had owned five or six through the years — were his freedom. As a funeral director, he wore a suit and tie every day for more than 40 years. As a biker, he wore an eagle tattoo on his forearm and an earring that people who worked with him never knew he had.

"When he would ride his bike, he was somebody else," Anita said. "He was his other self."

But even in his biker moments, Henry was still Henry. He meticulously serviced his motorcycle, seldom exceeded the speed limit and always wore a helmet.

None of that saved his life.

Anita will wait for her answers in the home the couple shared for 16 years. Though alone now, she can't move away. She still feels her husband's presence.

Twenty-two days after Henry died, Anita heard from Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco for the first time. She received a signed letter of condolence. Anita regularly speaks to a victim's advocate, who has told her the internal affairs investigation still hasn't been completed.

She wouldn't say if she has decided to sue the Sheriff's Office, but she didn't rule it out.

"I'm going to do whatever I have to do," she said. "He would have wanted to see justice served, so that's what we're going to do for Henry."

Times news researcher Shirl Kennedy and staff photographer Will Vragovic contributed to this report. John Woodrow Cox can be reached at (352) 848-1432 or jcox@sptimes.com.