43
MARINE CORPS RECRUITS’ FATALITIES Sides seek sentences in deadly crash
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The prosecution says Donald P. Williams Jr. of Austintown should go to prison for 18 years for driving a semi truck while using a drug for which he had no prescription and crashing into a car, killing three Marine Corps recruits.
The defense says that Williams, 46, of Bainbridge Avenue, has never been to prison before and hadn’t been in trouble with the law for nine years before the March 31, 2010, accident.
It happened on state Route 5 at the Burnett Street intersection just west of Warren.
The defense asks for a prison term of 61/2 years.
Williams pleaded guilty earlier to 10 charges, including three counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, three counts of aggravated vehicular assault, three counts of vehicular assault, and one count of drug possession.
His sentencing in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court is set for 1:30 p.m. next Wednesday before Judge Andrew Logan.
The pros- ecution and defense filed sentencing memoranda with the court Monday laying out the case for Williams’ punishment.
The prosecutor’s office cites Dr. Laureen Marinetti of the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, who found that Williams’ body had double the amount of Valium in it that is necessary to cause a “significant reduction in alertness and performance combined with increased sleepiness.”
The driver videocam showed that Williams “showed no reaction to the upcoming traffic situation” just before crashing into the stopped Pontiac G6 containing the recruits and instead “appears to stare as if hypnotized, which is a classic effect of the drugs that [Williams] consumed,” the prosecutor said.
Lt. Jack Holland of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, furthermore, reported that he had never seen, during 48 years as a highway patrolman and accident reconstructionist, anyone travel so far “causing such damage and destruction without hitting his brake before or after the initial impact.”
His tractor truck traveled 581 feet with no braking, injuring 12 people in all, prosecutors said.
The defense points out that Williams “suffered what can only be described as a traumatic childhood,” with a mother who was addicted to drugs and who went to prison for robbery when Williams was very young.
His father was in the U.S. Air Force, serving in Vietnam and suffering from a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder, leaving him unable to care for Williams.
“As a result, Mr. Williams was placed in a foster home where he was beaten by his foster parents. The defendant sought help from a juvenile court judge and was thereafter removed from the foster family and placed in a military-based facility where he remained from age 10 to 18,” the memorandum says.
The defense notes that Williams’ criminal history dates mostly from his youth, “and all are related to drugs and alcohol.”
“The defendant is genuinely remorseful for having caused the accident that hurt so many people, and the defendant has accepted responsibility for his actions.”
The prosecution notes that Williams falsified his employment application to work for Strimbu Trucking of Brookfield in January 2007, lying about his license having been suspended, about whether he’d ever been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, and whether he’d ever been referred to a substance-abuse professional.