Teen driver faces two counts of vehicular homicide
BY SHEILA MCLAUGHLIN | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
DEERFIELD TWP. - Chuck Rowe paced in front of the white crosses along Landen Drive on Monday. He cried in disbelief. He held the picture of his fiancee, taken before they met. He thought about the first time he would get to hold their son, before placing him in his mother's arms, in her casket.
Alexander Manocchio, a 16-year-old Loveland High junior, sat behind a barrier that separates the onlookers from the suspects in a Warren County juvenile courtroom. Dressed in a size XXL orange jail uniform, he hung his head and wept quietly.
He faces two charges of aggravated vehicular homicide that could send him to state juvenile prison for five years, and he had just learned that he wasn't going home for now. The brawny teen's mother and aunt stroked his neck and wavy brown hair, the way parents comfort a child.
The deaths of Karyn "Nikki" Cordell, 22, and her unborn child, drew them to these places.
On a short run Saturday night to Kroger in Landen to pick up chocolate milk to soothe her pregnancy craving, police said Cordell was killed when her 1998 Chevrolet Cavalier was slammed head-on by Manocchio's 2004 Ford Explorer.
Dartagnan Rowe, who was to be born in about two weeks, also died despite efforts at University Hospital to save him.
State troopers from Lebanon said the wreck happened when Manocchio, who was driving with two friends, reached for a ringing cell phone. The troopers estimated that the SUV was traveling 10 miles over the 35 mph limit, and said the three might have been smoking marijuana. Patrol officials did not know where the trio was headed.
It was one day after Manocchio had gotten his driver's license.
"It's just a tragedy all the way around," Lt. Anthony Lauer, who commands the Lebanon post, said.
Cordell's 2-year-old daughter, Summer, who was from another relationship but lived with the couple at their apartment about a mile from the crash site, has been living with her grandparents since her mother's death.
"I hope he lives to be 150 and has to live every day knowing he killed an unborn child and a mother," Cordell's sister, Angel, said of Manocchio. "It's going to follow him."
Manocchio is due back in court Monday. A judge will decide whether he can be released to his family. Until then, he is being held in the Warren County Juvenile Detention Center in Lebanon.
To Lauer, the crash underscores the hazards of young drivers, and of cell phones.
"The one major factor is the inexperience. But, when you throw in driver inattention, that only compounds things," he said.
"Obviously, cell phone use by anybody - you shouldn't do it while you're driving down the road. But you take a driver that's 16, and they don't have the reaction time because they don't have the experience of being behind the wheel to react to certain situations."
In 2005, the last year information was available, drivers age 16 to 20 were involved in 90,185 crashes - 246 of them fatal, according to the Ohio Department of Public Safety. Of those crashes, the driver was found to be at fault more than half of the time.
Nationally, drivers between the ages of 16 and 19 are four times more likely to be involved in a crash than older drivers, according to the Warren County CarTeens, a safety education program for teen drivers.
A study released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in April showed that cell-phone use was the most common distraction for drivers in crashes and near-misses. Drivers who dialed cell phones were three times more likely to crash. Almost 80 percent of crashes and 65 percent of near-crashes involved some form of driver distraction within three seconds of the incident.
So far, in Ohio, legislative efforts to restrict cell-phone use in cars and to increase the driving age have failed.
"I hope that cell-phone call was worth ruining my whole life," said Brandon Rowe, Chuck Rowe's brother.
The Manocchio family didn't want to talk about their son, and their lawyer, Tim Tepe, declined to comment after the hearing.
The first cross went up at the crash site Sunday. A neighbor who saw the crash put it there. Chuck Rowe came back with his own handmade versions that included the names of his fiancee and son. Among a large group of friends from Goshen, where they grew up, Cordell started dating Chuck Rowe about one year ago. They became inseparable.
Cordell, who was known for being spontaneous, fun-loving and a good mother, was about a semester away from becoming a phlebotomist after taking classes at Southwestern College in Springdale.
She was to be a witness at her sister Angel's wedding in two months.
A baby shower for Cordell and Dartagnan was planned for this Sunday.
Instead, Cordell and her son will be at Graceland Memorial Gardens.
E-mail smclaughlin@enquirer.com
