Posted on 05/18/2009 9:52:52 AM PDT by raccoonradio
A Saugus High School senior is being held on $7,500 bail today after prosecutors allege he drank 10 beers prom night then crashed his car the next morning killing a 67-year-old woman and injuring her daughter.
Jonathan Caruso, 18, pleaded innocent in Lynn District Court today to charges relating to Saturday morning’s tragic crash.
Prosecutor Christina Ronan said police arrived to a horrific scene: “Officers could also hear and see a woman crying in pain,” she said.
Caruso is charged with motor vehicle homicide by reckless operation, drunken driving and a minor transporting alcohol.
The prosecutor requested $20,000 bail, but defense attorney James McCall requested a bail Caruso’s family could afford.
If Caruso posts bail, he is required to wear a monitoring bracelet that will also test for his blood-alcohol level.
Ronan said a young woman believed to be the defendant’s girlfriend said at the scene of the crash: “We killed that person. We want to take full responsibility.”
Ronan also said in court today that Caruso was overheard by police saying at the scene “he should not have been driving after drinking” and that he must have fallen asleep behind the wheel and only remembers crashing into a stop sign.
The prosecutor added that when the defendant was asked how many drinks he had, he told them he was “celebrating prom and drank 10 beers earlier.” Caruso also had a “heavy smell” of alcohol at the crash scene and his blood-alcohol level was .02 at 9 a.m., according to court testimony.
The accident occurred at 7:30 a.m. Saturday at Essex and Grove streets in Saugus. Caruso had his last drink at 6 a.m., Ronan said.
“The party should have ended at 4 a.m. when school-sponsored activities ended,” the prosecutor said.
A woman believed to be the teen’s mother was in court and sobbed as the details of the tragic crash were spelled out.
Authorities say Caruso hit both Charlotte Marean, 41, and Carol Marean, 67. The older woman was killed and her daughter critically injured.
They were walking their dog Happy when they were hit by a Chevy sedan being driven by Caruso, police said.
Two other teens were also in the car, police said.
Caruso, his lawyer said, lives with his mother and grandparents in Saugus and was set to graduate May 30.
The young man had attended his school’s senior prom Friday night at the Danversport Yacht Club and then was part of a chaperoned cruise of Boston Harbor. Teens were bused back to Saugus at 4 a.m.
The Essex prosecutor added that police found four beer cans in Caruso’s car at the scene of the crash.
Hate to rain on everyone’s parade, but did anyone notice the BAC. .02. .02 is not impaired. You may call that a “technicality” but there it is. Being up all night, I would bet he fell asleep. You may want someone convicted negligent homicide for falling asleep and you may be right. But you can’t seriously believe that someone with a BAC of .02 can be convicted on that alone.
“pleaded innocent”
Pet peeve: he pled “not guilty”, not “innocent”. No jury finds a defendant “innocent”, they find him or her “not guilty”. Picky? Maybe, but it sets the burden where the Constitution puts it: on the government to prove guilt, rather than on the defendant to prove innocence.
Colonel, USAFR,
Judge, Prosecutor, Defense Counsel (different jurisdictions!)
They will—or can, if they choose—get this kid on vehicular homicide and drinking as a minor. But I bet you that they CAN’T get a conviction on drunk driving.
Why? He blew a .02 at 9 am, an hour and a half after the accident. He’d have to metabolize from .08 down to .02 in an hour and a half—possible, but marginal. Chances are, he was under the .08 limit when he killed this woman. If there’s a lesser offense in Massachusetts for driving with a BAC under .08, maybe they can stick that on him. But not DWI if the legal limit in MA is .08.
That having been said, yes, I think he needs to be tried as an adult and nailed for vehicular homicide and all the other various included stuff. This kid made an entire chain of ridiculously bad decisions that he should’ve known wasn’t going to end well.
}:-)4
No, they’re holding the government to its burden and trying to work out a deal. Both completely appropriate.
Colonel, USAFR
What was it at 7:30 when the crash happened? The article says it was .02 at 9:00. That is an hour and a half after the accident.
Most likely a plea bargain. The DA will offer him a deal he can't refuse and he'll change his plea to guilty.
You don’t go from sober to drunk in 1hr 30 minutes. I’m not sure by law if you can extrapolate (?) BAC back. I would think that if you do a BAC test you have to go with what you got. But whatever. I defer to jagusafr.
Whoops, sorry. You most assuredly can go from sober to drunk in 1hr 30 minutes. I meant to say “drunk to sober”.
I have been known to tie one on back in my early days in the Air Force but if I ever tried to drink ten beers in three hours not only would I have not been able to stand but the only driving I would have been doing was the "porcelain bus."
3 hours after the fact. Assuming he had a .02 three hours after the event and that he weighs anywhere from 160-180 lbs, that means his BAC at 6 AM was somewhere around .08, but that doesn’t matter, because MA law states that if you’re under 21, .02 is legally drunk.
I say throw the book at them.
Let them all rot in jail.
First, it says the wreck occured at 7:30. I didn’t see where it says the test was taken at 10:30. Maybe I missed something, but I don’t think so. Also, it does say that he had a drink at 6:00. If so and you took a BAC reading at 7:30 then an average person would show a BAC of .02 if you had no alcohol in your system at 6. As for MA law. That doesn’t even make any sense. Thank you MADD. Impaired is impaired weather you are 12 or 21 or 45. IMO .08 is just a tool for more revenue but that discussion is for another day.
There is no way he downed 10 beers and blew a .02. 10 beers would be between .13 and .18 depending on his weight.
He either blew 0.2 and the paper screwed up the reporting or he didn’t drink 10 beers.
yes or as has been rumored he was tipsy/tired and said he drank a lot more than he really did.
Howie Carr is talking about this right now and used the same phrase I did: he was “making up for lost time” (doing the drinking between 4-6 am”. As Howie just said, oh boo hoo,
he may miss his graduation; “guess what, the woman’s gonna miss the rest of her life”.
Howie is wondering who gave him the beer; beer was found in the car.
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I’m just going by what the facts as written are. And that’s what his defense is going to do. There are entirely too many people on this thread who didn’t read the article, didn’t understand it, or just don’t care.
It would depend on when he drank the 10 beers as to what he would blow. So as his lawyer, the first thing that would come to mind is if he blew a .02 then he didn’t drink 10 beers just before the accident.
If I drink 10 beers tonight before 8 and have a wreck the next morning at 9 and kill someone I guess that makes me guilty of homicide?
So, being drunk at .02 is what confuses me. Nobody I know, no organization, (with the possible exception of MADD), no police, no NOBODY, says that .02 is impaired.
“what part about being drunk and under 21 confuses you?”
That part, that part right there confuses me. The part about being drunk and blowing a .02. Got it?
Hours after the incident? Accident was at 7:30 and test was at 9. You are not going from .08 to .02 in 1 1/2 hours. If you want to go to a .02 as cause for DUI then go ahead.
I’m not excusing anyone’s behavior. As someone posted to me earlier he either didn’t drink 10 beers or he didn’t blow .02. You can’t have it both ways.
What I am responding to, mostly, is these guilty before innocent folks. And the ones who wonder what kind of moral character any lawyer would have to represent him, and why bail was “so low”, etc.
Also, I didn’t see anything about a blood sample. Great if they got one. Except, after a little more time that .02 is gonna be 0.
The kid ran over someone and killed them. Happens everyday. So let the chips fall where they may. But don’t say it was because he was .02. It would seem to me it was probably because he hadn’t had any sleep in 24 hrs. So, put him in jail for that. The only problem with that is folks look at it as “there but for the grace of God” thing.
My solution is, if you have a wreck and kill someone and you are negligent then you do 10 year minimum. Cell phones, inattention, running a stop sign, eating, screaming kids. Whatever. Driving while stupid should be a capital offense.
I’m not trying to excuse his behavior just questioning the facts as written.
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