No matter how old they got, Eileen D’Anna-Mallett knew what she was in for when both her boys climbed into the car with her.
She gave the same speech every time.
‘Even when they grew up, I’d say ‘do I have to pull this car over??? she remembers, describing the endless poking, and whispering and taunting between the front and back seat.
And it wasn’t just in the car’born just 20 months apart, Vincent and Elliot swirled in brotherly mischief.
Like the time they started the grass fire.
‘It was our yard, though,? Elliot interjects, as the memory surfaces years later. ‘We found a book of matches and started lighting them’actually, Vincent started lighting them’and throwing them in the grass.?
Cross-legged on the living room floor of the home she shares with her husband and two young daughters, the older sister confesses.
‘I was supposed to be babysitting,? said Camille D’Anna-Leinbach.
‘Or the time we went out the window and climbed on the roof,? Elliot remembers.
A sheepish grin crosses Camille’s face as she offers another confession.
‘I was supposed to be babysitting then, too,? she said. ‘But they were upstairs, being quiet.?
Their mother laughs.
‘Quiet?? Eileen asks her daughter. ‘When they were quiet, that’s when you had to go check on them.?
Growing up in Independence Township, Camille, Vincent and Elliot all attended Bailey Lake Elementary, and all graduated from Clarkston High School.
While Camille was about 7 years old when Vincent came along, Eileen always said her two boys were like twins. She told them they were two peas in a pod.
As children do, the boys got the saying a little mixed up.
‘We’re two peapods!? they’d tell people.
‘They were like the Blues Brothers,? Eileen said. ‘That’s the first thing I thought when I saw that movie. Vincent and Elliot.?
Mischief or otherwise, she said, they were the best of friends. Always.
But on August 26, 2007, the unthinkable happened and Vincent’just 26 years old and 16 months into his career as a police officer’was gone forever.
Today, Elliot carries a snapshot in his wallet, a photo of his brother wearing the trademark grin his family misses so much.
It’s all he has left of his brother, really’some photos, a short lifetime of memories and one of Vincent’s two prized motorcycles.
Vincent got his first bike in 2005, a Yamaha V-Max, which Eileen helped him buy as a college graduation gift.
‘I told him I didn’t want him to have the bike,? she said. ‘But he was an adult, and I couldn’t stop him.?
Last July, Vincent bought his second bike’a 2007 Suzuki’and took a solo trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
When he came home, Vincent told his family about ‘the most perfect little town? he saw while cruising through some of the state’s more rural areas. It’s one of the things his family loved about his, the way he noticed all the details in life’the way he appreciated things.
Less than a month later he was on the Suzuki near his mom’s home in Independence Township when a drunk driver hit him from behind, hit him again, then hit him a third time, trapping him under the car.
Vincent wasn’t being reckless’a dozen eyewitnesses testified in court, nor was his ability to drive in any way impaired. A toxicologist testified Vincent’s blood was clean as a whistle.
But his injuries were catastrophic. Knocked from his motorcycle during the second impact, Vincent was dragged 180 feet along the pavement on Sashabaw Road trapped under a low-riding Camaro.
With sirens blaring, Vincent found his characteristic optimism and managed to tell the paramedic this thing wasn’t going to kill him. He lived less than six hours after the accident.

When the call came, Eileen raced toward hospital’everyone did. Family, friends and fellow police officers rushed in from every direction.
Gathered in the hallway of Genesys Hospital, they were afraid, but hopeful. For precious few moments, no one knew exactly what happened, or how bad the accident was.
But the doctors were blunt; they had no hope to offer, and time was short, even for goodbyes? ‘He had on some kind of a neck brace,? Eileen said, describing the way her son looked as he lay in the hospital bed. ‘I touched his neck. I said ‘Vincent, it’s Mom. I’m here. I love you.??
Looking back, she still grapples with the helpless feeling of a mother who could do nothing to help her son, and finds herself wishing she’d stayed longer by the bedside after Vincent died.
Even after he was gone, Eileen said, Vincent was trying to tell her something.
‘He had a look on his face, and his head was turned toward me,? she said, struggling to articulate what her mother’s heart just knew. ‘I don’t know. It seemed like he was saying ‘Mom, I’m scared, I’m hurt, don’t leave me.? I should have stayed longer.?
Camille and Elliot try to reassure her.
‘Mom, we were there a long time. We stayed a long time.?
Today, Camille keeps hearing her brother’s laugh. He had a deep voice, she explains, kind of a gruff voice.
But when he laughed’and he laughed often’his voice lifted of into a higher-pitched, boyish sound.
‘He had his own brand of humor,? Camille said. ‘You either got it or you didn’t; most people didn’t, but they laughed anyway.?
Like the time, during Daytona Bike week 2007, when Vincent thought it would be funny to pose for a photo with a 20-something stranger who apparently had too much to drink and settled in for a curbside nap near some bulging garbage bags.
Or, during the same trip, when he and some friends baked a stepping-stone sized cookie, which they eventually used to lure a flock of pigeons into their hotel room.
No one is sure exactly why’it was just Vincent: young, silly, goofy and happy.
And while nothing about her brother’s death or the ensuing eight months has been easy for Camille, she grows hoarse and chokes back tears describing the innocent questions fired off by her 3-year-old.
‘She’s always asking ‘Where’s Uncle Vincent??? Camille said. ‘Like, ‘he must be around here somewhere.??
But he’s not. Vincent is, in fact, buried in Lakeview Cemetery.
‘I just worry about the day she stops asking,? Camille said. Her younger daughter was just four months old when Vincent died. ‘I don’t want them to forget him.?
After graduating in 1999, Vincent went on to Ferris State University, where he planned to pursue an education leading to a career in automotive painting and bodywork. He was an artist and a perfectionist, and had bought his own equipment and painted his own motorcycle, as well as those of several friends. Again, his family said, the details were important and Vincent gave his work nothing less than his best efforts.
Along the line, though, something changed, and Vincent decided on an entirely different career path. He was going to be a police officer.
‘I told myself that if anything happened in the line of duty, I’d accept it, because he was doing what he wanted to do,? said Eileen. ‘I was prepared for it.?
The family knew the risks inherent to a police officer, but they didn’t expect to lose him when he was off-duty, and probably just on his way to grab a burger.
Vincent, who’d rented an apartment in Goodrich to fulfill the residency requirements of the Flint Police department, came home to his mom’s on August 26, threw a load of clothes in the wash and jumped on his bike. It was a beautiful day.
After she returned from the hospital, Eileen took her son’s clothes from the dryer and folded them.
Eileen is angry’very, very angry’at the man who hurt her boy.
‘People say ‘Oh, you’ve been though so much,? she said, shaking her head. ‘I haven’t been through it. I wasn’t under that car. I’m not the one who got dragged down the road all that way.?
It’s unbearable, knowing what her son went through as he was dragged those 180 feet.
‘I can talk about it, I can read about it,? said Eileen, crossing her hands over her heart. ‘But when I really think about it, I can’t breathe.?
Then it’s the words’certain words, that when strung together, form sentences like ‘someone murdered my son,? or ‘my son was killed by a drunk driver?’that make Eileen press her palms against her ears. She just wants the words out of her head.
Again and again she tells herself ‘No. I can’t even believe it. Those words aren’t real.?
But the words are real, and it wasn’t the first time the family faced tragedy.
The kids lost their dad when he was just 42.
Then, in 2000, two weeks after another driver ran a red light and broadsided the car he and Eileen were driving in, Eileen’s second husband died from injuries sustained during the accident.
Everyone in the family was at his bedside’everyone but Vincent, who was battling a snowstorm trying to make it home from school in time.
‘He always felt bad that he didn’t make it in time,? Camille said. ‘He got so worked up in the hospital over it, he ended up with a bloody nose.?
For years, the family grieved the loss and, as often happens to those who experience tragedy, waited for the other shoe to drop. Waited and worried.
Finally, the fear subsided.
‘Just last summer I thought ‘everything is going great,?? Eileen said. ‘I finally felt like I wasn’t worrying anymore.?
It wasn’t until she was standing in the hospital that Eileen learned Vincent had recently begun a serious romantic relationship with a fellow police officer.
‘I met her at the hospital for the first time,? Eileen said. ‘He’d just met her family the week before. Maybe she was my future daughter-in-law, who knows? But now Vincent will never have a wedding, he’ll never have a house, never have anything. He was just starting. Everything was going perfect.?
Elliot misses his brother. Even as adults, he and Vincent never ceased the good-natured pranks that began in childhood. ‘He’d turn my light on in the middle of the night and leave,? said Elliot. ‘Or put the vacuum in my room, turn it on and leave.?
Not one to take it lying down, Elliot laughs at the memory of one of his own retaliatory pranks.
‘You know those plastic mats you put your computer chair on?? he asks, ‘The ones with the poker things on the bottom side? I turned that upside down and put it outside his bedroom door.?
He knew his brother would eventually emerge in bare feet.
Elliot smiles, but his eyes are sad.
‘It’s like getting kicked in the stomach,? Camille said. ‘Some days, it’s almost too much to even handle.?
Camille’s husband, Jim Leinbach said his wife is forever changed.
‘It’s like her soul was stolen, then put back with pieces missing,? he said. ‘She’ll never be the same.?
Leinbach calls his in-laws ‘the kindest, most gentle people you’d ever meet.?
Vincent, he said, was no exception.
‘It’s a shock to the system when good doesn’t prevail,? he said. ‘In every fairy tale, every children’s story, the good guy always wins.?
Leinbach and Camille began dating in 1993, and married in 1997. As he grew to know each member of the family, there were a few instances when that ‘goodness? worried him.
‘It scared the daylights out of me when Vince said he was going to be a cop,? Leinbach said. ‘You have to push people around when you’re a cop, you have to put guys in a choke hold. That just wasn’t him. I never saw him be mean to anyone.?
But, he said, after giving the subject some thought and discussing it with Camille, both decided a career in law enforcement was perfect for Vincent.
‘He was the epitome of good,? Leinbach said, illustrating the point with an anecdote about the way Vincent would sometimes buy a sack of cheeseburgers for homeless people. ‘Eventually we came to the conclusion that he was going to make a great cop.?
Getting through the weeklong trial for the man accused of killing his brother-in-law, Leinbach said, was difficult, but something the family had to do.
‘The nature of the accident was so horrendous,? he said. ‘It’s been at the top of mind for the last eight months and there’s a certain amount of numbness, almost like you practiced the trial in your head, day after day, and almost grew numb to be able to get through it.?
Ramon Pineda, an illegal Mexican immigrant, was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Vincent D’Anna. Sentencing is set for June 4 in Oakland County’s 6th Circuit Court.