Hands trembling, face flushed, voice a terrified croak, Justin Lapier, 20, tried to explain yesterday how he felt about having killed two of his best friends. " 'I'm sorry' doesn't cut it," he told their parents in a Spotsylvania County courtroom. " 'I'm sorry' is what I'd say if I broke something in your house."
In a letter to the judge, Lapier described how it happened -- how he was drinking and driving that April night before the accident, how he revved up his new Acura shortly before dawn because his friends "wanted to see what my car could do." What it could do -- before it flipped on a winding country road in central Virginia -- was at least 95 mph.
During a sentencing hearing, Cathy Hill looks at a photo of her late son, Chad, that is held by Commonwealth's Attorney William Neely.
(Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post)
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Accident Victims: The number of young people killed in traffic accidents has surged in recent weeks.
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So when the judge sentenced Lapier to five months in jail, the courtroom suddenly went silent of crying for the first time all afternoon -- the quiet of parents left without resolution, with rocked families and ruined friendships and a sense that the price for all that would not be paid. Lapier faced a maximum 10-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter.
"He showed no remorse," said Mike Hill, whose stepson, Chad, 19, was one of the victims and whose wife, Cathy, grieved herself into a psychiatric ward.
After a series of fatal Washington area accidents involving teenage drivers, the story of the crash is a window into the lifelong, life-changing consequences for those who survive. The incident exploded like a land mine not only among families, but also among a group of friends who graduated from Courtland High School in 2002 and no longer talk to each other.
"Some people are going to be mad and some people are going to be happy. It's like a Catch-22," Justin Burtner, a member of the group, said of the sentencing. He said he quit his job at a furniture warehouse because he was too upset over the accident to work. He no longer talks to Lapier, a Navy airman whose father describes him as suicidal.
As yesterday's sentencing hearing approached, feelings about the proper punishment were complicated and mixed. They were no less complicated after Lapier was led from the courtroom.
"It could sort of be the end after all this," said Maria O'Neal, whose son Christopher, 20, also died in the accident.
Earlier, she testified that his death led her and her husband to seek counseling and left their younger son unable to discuss his brother. "All our dreams are shattered," she said.
According to the plea agreement, the accident unfolded on a cell-phone call between O'Neal and a friend, Allison Lindsey, 15, whom he called from the car. "She received an excited call from Chris O'Neal at 4:25 a.m., stating that he was riding in the defendant's car and that the defendant was traveling 90 to 100 miles per hour. And then the phone went dead."
Commonwealth's Attorney William Neely asked Circuit Court Judge William Ledbetter to sentence Lapier to two years -- a year for each life lost. "It sort of says: What are these two lives worth? It gives measure," Neely said.
But the path wasn't always clear for Neely. Initially, the families were divided. The O'Neals wanted a tough sentence for Lapier, but Cathy Hill said immediately after the accident that she didn't want her son's friend to go to jail. She asked Lapier to be a pallbearer at Chad's funeral
Although she wavered in the following months, Hill still was saying Wednesday that jail wasn't the answer.
"My kid could have been driving, and I try to put myself into [Lapier's] place," she said. "I'm not saying he should get off -- a lot needs to be done with him. He needs therapy, and he should suffer, but as far as community service and his pocketbook goes. I don't see what putting someone in jail like that does."
