Homicide charges against a Selma truck driver have been dropped by a Tennessee grand jury.

On Feb. 8, Dennis Doherty of Selma was on his first solo trip as a truck driver for T&M Express when a dense fog set in over Greeneville, Tenn. Doherty pulled out on U.S. Highway 11, a divided 4-lane, and then stopped his truck, according to State Troopers. When Doherty stopped the truck, three cars crashed into his trailer, killing Jose Banuelos and Olga Torrales of Hamblen County, Tenn.

After the accident, Doherty was arrested and held on a $50,000 bond. He was later released pending the two homicide charges. Earlier this week, a Greene County grand jury refused to indict Doherty on the charges. Assistant District Attorney Cecil Mills Jr. said prosecutors would not try to bring the case to the grand jury.

Doherty’s attorney, Todd Chapman, said it would be unwise for Doherty to comment on the case because it is still possible that a district attorney could bring more charges. Chapman said that while Doherty was grateful for the grand jury’s action, he remains distraught over the entire episode.

“This is not a happy day for Dennis Doherty,” Chapman said. “He was devastated by what happened, but he is trying to move on with his life.”

When contacted about the grand jury’s refusal to indict him, Doherty declined to comment.

Doherty most recently served as the coordinator of the U.S. Navy’s recruiting office in Selma. Before that, he was stationed in Japan for three years.

At a preliminary hearing in the case, Doherty testified that he was making his first solo trip as a tractor-trailer driver when he became lost in the fog while trying to find a Wal-Mart Distribution Center. The fog apparently was so dense that he could not see what was coming in either traffic lane.

After the accident and death of Banuelos and Torrales, an arrest warrant said that Doherty “recklessly pulled from [Tennessee] Highway 348 onto U.S. 11 East and blocked all eastbound lanes of travel.”

One witness at the accident scene described the fog that had set over eastern Tennessee that day as one of “the heaviest in recent memory.”

A multi-million-dollar federal lawsuit has been filed against Doherty’s employer, T&M Express, of Washington Court House, Ohio, on behalf of Torrales’ survivors and others injured in wreck.