Calling it the most difficult case he has tried in 16 years, a judge Monday sentenced an Arlington Heights man to 90 days of home detention and 2 years` probation for supplying beer at a party that ended in the deaths last November of three young girls in an auto crash.
”This case right now is the toughest case I`ve ever had to preside in my career,” Associate Judge Nicholas T. Pomaro said in the Rolling Meadows branch of Cook County Circuit Court. ”I don`t do any of this lightly.”
Pomaro, after hearing emotional statements from family members of the three girls, and a lot of ”soul-searching,” also ordered William Vodicka, 18, to perform 400 hours of community service and ordered an examination to see whether Vodicka needed psychiatric help.
Pomaro said Vodicka had to perform his community service at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where Vodicka will ”be able to see directly the results of accidents caused by drunken driving.”
Vodicka pleaded guilty Aug. 10 to a misdemeanor charge of delivering of alcohol to a minor. Neil Lawlor, then 15, who had no license and had been drinking at the party, drove the car that crashed into a tree in Mt. Prospect Nov. 9, killing Kate Conlon, Meggan McDermott and Emily Serafin, all 14 years old.
Lawlor, 16, pleaded guilty in May to three counts of reckless homicide in a juvenile delinquency petition, and is serving five years` probation and 2,080 hours of community service.
Vodicka, who got the beer for the party at the request of his stepsister, though he didn`t attend the party himself, could have received up to 1 year in prison and a $1,000 fine.
Vodicka, in a short statement to the judge, said he felt remorse over the accident and sympathy for the victims` families. ”I wish this accident had never happened,” he said.
Before the sentencing, Meggan McDermott`s father, James, read a statement that indicted Vodicka and asked, ”Does he care that three innocent 14-year-olds are dead?”
The girl`s mother, Rusty, also read a statement to the judge that told of an anguished life after the death of her daughter. ”We have been robbed of the precious joy of this child,” she said. ”Never will I see her accomplish her goals and her dreams.”
She told of losing 25 pounds since the accident, of experiencing aches and pains, of not being able to function normally. Her husband, she said, is
”physically and emotionally” impaired, ”doesn`t sleep through the night,” and prays at his daughter`s grave and that of Kate Conlon, who is buried nearby.
Rhonda Serafin, the mother of Emily, also spoke to the judge. With her husband, John, standing by her side, Serafin told of a letter her daughter wrote before enrolling at Prospect High School in Mt. Prospect, in which ”all I ask is four good years of high school.”
”Emily`s dreams have been laid to rest,” she said. ”Not gently, but violently.”
Vodicka sat silent throughout the hearing, though he did cry when a neighbor talked about Vodicka`s caring for his mother, who died of cancer two years ago.
The neighbor and a letter from family friends were used in Vodicka`s defense by his attorney, Marc Kadish. Also speaking was Vodicka`s stepmother, who thought the blame for the three girls` deaths shouldn`t just lie with her stepson.
”There is not one parent here who is not guilty,” said Mary Vodicka, 41, after her stepson was sentenced. ”I think we as parents should tighten up . . . our discipline.”
A statement from the family of Kate Conlon, read by Assistant State`s Atty. Dominick DiMaggio, asked that the judge not sentence Vodicka to jail.
”We see no purpose to sending him to Cook County Jail for even one day,”
it said.
”It was a very difficult case . . . we`re satisfied he didn`t have to go to jail,” said Kadish, who argued that the state`s wish to send his client to jail, while requesting probation for Lawlor, ”is hypocritical. It`s giving in to community vengeance.”
”You can`t really be happy with any sentence that doesn`t bring the girls back,” said DiMaggio, who said in arguments that Vodicka ”acted like an adult, he should be sentenced like an adult. . . . He caused the deaths of three wonderful little girls.”
