After police say a drunk and high Angelo Valentine Rodriguez drove his van onto a Friendship sidewalk on Jan. 27, killing Adrienne Keil, 17, and critically injuring Sheldon Hawkins, 25, officers found him hiding under a porch, maced him and dragged him out.

As one officer escorted him back to the scene of the crash on Penn Avenue, he asked if Mr. Rodriguez was injured.

"I don't care about me," he said. "I feel terrible about what I did to those people."

Mr. Rodriguez, 41, of Lawrenceville, said he had been drinking and smoking marijuana and crack "all day," according to an affidavit.

He also offered an explanation: "I'm drunk. I do drugs."

Court records indicate Mr. Rodriguez, who faces a preliminary hearing Friday on homicide by vehicle and 19 other charges, does that and a lot more.

In addition to being sued by at least four women for failure to pay child support, he's spent much of his life in jail, including stints in state prison in the 1980s and 1990s for robberies and assault.

Since his release from the state system in 2001, he has been arrested repeatedly in Wilkinsburg and Pittsburgh. In fact, he was on probation for two convictions in 2003 when the Penn Avenue crash occurred.

Mr. Rodriguez has a history of committing new crimes while still being supervised for old ones.

To begin with, he was behind the wheel Jan. 27 even though police said his license was under suspension for driving drunk in 2002.

That isn't uncommon in Pennsylvania. City police often see people driving who are known to have suspended licenses. All they can do is write them another citation because they don't have the power to arrest in that situation, as police in many other states do.

In Pittsburgh, there are hundreds of such drivers who simply ignore the citations and keep driving. Police can force someone to leave the car where it is and walk or get a ride home, but many just return later and drive away.

Police are particularly incensed because drivers who might otherwise be in jail have ended up killing people.

The problem has gotten worse recently because city police aren't taking as many drunk drivers to jail as they once did. Officers used to have more discretion in arresting drunks on the spot, but a change in the law this summer designed in part to reduce jail overcrowding now requires them to release most.

Except in egregious cases, police are now supposed to call someone to pick up the drunk and take him home. In rural and suburban areas, that's what police normally did anyway, but in cities where officers are busier, they used to haul people directly to jail so they could go back on patrol.

Now in most cases, police must cite people for DUI and then wait around for the designated driver to show up.

Some officers have derided the change as a "catch and release" policy.

And while criminals routinely ignore license suspensions, many don't take probation and parole conditions very seriously either.

Court records show that Mr. Rodriguez has violated probation, parole and even prison rules repeatedly.

In February 1988, according to state records, he was paroled after serving 11 months to a year in prison for robbery, but he was convicted of robbery again and went back to prison in 1990 for three more years.

Released in June 1993, he violated parole three months later when New Kensington police arrested him on two counts of indecent assault and one count of possession of drug paraphernalia. He returned to state prison, this time for seven years.

While behind bars, he was refused parole repeatedly for "poor prison adjustment." He served his maximum time and got out on Jan. 6, 2001, no longer under state supervision.

But he soon got into trouble again.

In August 2002, Wilkinsburg police arrested him for drunken driving after he drove through a stop sign and crashed. A preliminary blood alcohol reading was 0.187, approaching twice the 0.10 limit in effect at the time and more than double the 0.08 limit today.

He was jailed for a couple of days and ordered into a treatment program.

In December of that year, Wilkinsburg police arrested him again, saying he attacked his wife, then pulled a knife and punched a man at an apartment on Mill Street. He was charged with simple assault and reckless endangerment, although the Allegheny County district attorney's office withdrew a more serious charge of aggravated assault.

A few weeks later, Pittsburgh police arrested him for breaking into an apartment at 5615 East Liberty Blvd., where officers said he punched a man and then assaulted his two daughters, ages 14 and 16, when they tried to intervene. Police said he also threatened to kill the father and the 16-year-old.

Those two cases were rolled into one. Common Pleas Judge John Zottola sentenced him in October 2003 to between five and 23 months in the county jail, to be followed by four years of probation, which will be up in October.

It's not clear exactly when he got out of the county lockup, but in September 2004, Pittsburgh police arrested him yet again, this time for criminal trespass at 5000 Schenley Ave., where a woman called police to say he was in her kitchen making a peanut butter sandwich. Police also found a crack pipe on him.

Common Pleas Judge Cheryl Allen gave him time served -- the two months he had spent in jail awaiting trial -- and a year of probation.

Although the new conviction meant he had violated his previous probation, he didn't go immediately to jail.

Court officials said cases in which people are given overlapping probation by different judges aren't unusual. If everyone who violated probation was jailed, they say, there wouldn't be any jail space left.

So Mr. Rodriguez was out on probation from both judges when he got arrested again in Wilkinsburg on Feb. 4, 2005, this time on charges of robbing a man of $180.

While Mr. Rodriguez was being held in that case, Judge Zottola sentenced him to 14 more months behind bars for violating his 2003 probation.

The new Wilkinsburg case was dropped when the victim failed three times to show up for court, and Mr. Rodriguez was released on June 7.

Pittsburgh police arrested him on Dec. 18 on a prowling charge, but he posted bail and got out. The case was withdrawn a few weeks later.

All of which meant Mr. Rodriguez was free on Jan. 27 to, according to his own admissions to police and medical personnel, smoke dope all day and then climb behind the wheel.

Now, at least, it appears he'll be staying in jail. He's being held without bond pending the preliminary hearing.

The hearing was pushed back from the original Feb. 2 date because Mr. Hawkins was still in the hospital and not ready to testify. He had no connection to Ms. Keil, but was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Police said he had been leaning against a wall when Mr. Rodriguez drove onto the sidewalk and hit him.

He was treated at UPMC Presbyterian for multiple fractures, but has elected not to let the hospital reveal any information about his condition. His parents have also chosen not to discuss his condition or the crash.