Posted on 05/26/2005 9:09:09 AM PDT by m1-lightning
Flowers and a melancholy note from grieving family members wilted in the rain on a telephone poll at the corner of Nesper Street and Ryan Avenue in Mayfair yesterday, just a few yards from where a young mother was fatally injured last month.
Sarah McGinley, 18, was pinned by an out-of-control car on her fiance's front lawn on April 17, just seconds after she tossed her 1-year-old daughter to safety. She died from her injuries a few hours later.
Yesterday morning, the District Attorney's Office announced it was filing charges against the driver, Megan Miller, 15, and her father, Richard Miller, 46.
With her father alongside her, Megan Miller was practicing driving in the parking lot of Abraham Lincoln High School when the car crashed through a fence, sped across an intersection and soared up the lawn, hitting McGinley. Miller did not have a learner's permit or a driver's license.
The teen is charged with being involved in an accident involving death or personal injury while not being properly licensed, and will be tried in juvenile court.
Her father is being charged with involuntary manslaughter and homicide by vehicle. He could face up to 12 years in prison, said D.A. spokeswoman Cathie Aboo-kire.
Both father and daughter surrendered to the police accident-investigation division yesterday afternoon, said the family's attorney, Fortunato Perri Jr.
"It is an impossibly difficult time for them," Perri said. "They have nothing but grief for McGinley's family."
The Millers are expected to have separate preliminary hearings within the next week, Perri said.
In both cases, "I think the judge will evaluate the situation and see it's nothing more than an accident. She lost control of the vehicle and was unable to stop what happened. It's a shame," he said.
Local criminal-defense attorney A. Charles Peruto said he believes that juvenile court will be kind to Megan Miller. "The most likely outcome is that they will defer adjudication. They'll leave her in limbo until she's 18 and then wipe her record clean," Peruto said.
The reason, he said, is that as a "young, nonindependent person," she was just following her father's instructions to practice driving.
District Attorney Lynne Abraham viewed the Millers' accident different from Peruto. She cited Pennsylvania law stating that drivers must obtain learner's permits before they can possess a driver's license. "Then and only then may you get behind the wheel of a lethal vehicle and drive the car," she said.
Abraham also faulted Richard Miller for allowing his daughter to drive his 1999 Mercury Grand Marquis, even though they were in a deserted parking lot. If Miller had denied his daughter a driving lesson, "that would have prevented a young mother from dying, and a child from being orphaned for her entire life."
McGinley's daughter, Victoria Wagner, is being cared for by her fiance and his parents.
She was driving without a driver's license or a learners permit. That is a crime, and she and her dad both knew it.
I'm not willing to totally excuse the teen, and withholding the license seems to me to be the way to punish her.
Incorrect frame of mind here.
With vehicles, there are no accidents; someone is always negligent.
What was part of the role of the father for being in the vehicle other than for instruction? Control.
The 1999 Grand Marque has an automatic transmission with either a column shift select or an option for console select. The prudent person instructing would have either changed the transmission selection of gear (neutral, reverse, park in that order of select) or turned the ignition off. That was his job!
"A person who drives (aims) a car across a persons lawn and kills a person commits murder."
"Murder" imnplies criminal intent to take a life. Causing the death of another is homicide, which covers negligence, accidental, justifiable, etc.
I wasn't allowed behind the wheel until I got my "learner's". Ah, 15 years and 8 months. How I waited for it!
People in Drivers Ed classes don't have a learner's permit either, and they're out on major roads. It sounds like the Dad was being cautious by usng an empty parking lot and it turned tragic anyway.
There are stop signs all over my local Wal-Mart parking lot and they mean nothing other than Wal-Mart can ask me to keep out if they don't like me running them.
But the cars used by Driver's Ed classes have two brakes so the adult can intervene in an emergency. And in my area, you have to have the permit to take Driver's Ed. Though in Pa, DE is not required, just 50 hours of supervised training AFTER the permit.
But the law in PA is that you must have a learner's permit to drive a car anywhere. (I guess your own private property might not apply.) So they were breaking the law by letting her drive.
Nope! Considered school property, not public property. Once they left the lot, even though by accident is where the parent becomes accountable for reckless endangerment.
While were on the subject, has it escaped anyone that we actually have a father, involved in his child's life, teaching her to drive, instead of letting her fend for herself. Admittedly he failed as a teacher, but not as Dad.
Remember in the old days when we actually had Driver's Ed and Driver's Training taught in High School? No more. Just another casualty in our over-lawyered country. Thank you very much greedy lawyers!! Just like our kids are fat and lazy because they aren't allowed to break a sweat during P.E. anymore because some shmuck sued over some accidental injury. I feel sorry for all the people involved in this. I think the father was trying to save the money driving school would have cost and teach his daughter himself. I would much rather the schools teach our kids how to drive than all the time they spend on "safe sex education". They won't stop teaching that 'till someone sues the district for some condom injury or something. :-0
But this girl didn't have her permit. If she had, then the dad MAY have had some liability for not stopping the car by throwing it into neutral or something, but the negligent homocide wouldn't have applied.
We still have driver's ed at the high schools here in the Philly burbs. My private school kids can take it through the local district.
Good point about the extra brake. I remember taking Driver's Ed in high school and we used cars without the failsafe brake.
I agree, but sadly, nowadays too many drivers think the accelerator is their best buddy, and the horn will get them out of trouble.
In Maryland and I suspect many other states, obtaining a learner's permit involves no training whatsoever about operation or control of a vehicle. It consists of a very long wait in the DMV paper processing area and a very short, multiple choice test on traffic law trivia.
The notion that having jumped through the requisite government paperwork hoops would have somehow made this 15 yr old, first time driver competent to drive and thus prevented this accident is not logical.
One family is already ruined here. The knee jerk reaction that since someone died then by god we have to punish someone is only going to succeed in ruining another.
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