Prosecutor: Driver was going nearly 150 mph before crash

ALBANY — The man accused of causing a 2014 double-fatal Guilderland Thruway crash was driving at nearly 150 mph when his vehicle slammed into the back of a semitrailer, a prosecutor said this morning.

The impact broke the car in two and ejected all three occupants, said prosecutor Michael Shanley.

Shanley said the driver of the vehicle was Tyler Pascuzzi, 26. He was also the only person in his car to survive the crash.

Pascuzzi’s defense is pointing to Cody J. Veverka, who died in the crash, as the person behind the wheel at the time of the crash, saying state police and prosecutors rushed to judgment and narrowed their focus on the wrong person.

Pascuzzi is standing trial in Albany on multiple counts related to the July 4, 2014, crash, including aggravated vehicular homicide. Attorneys offered their opening statements on Tuesday.

If convicted, he faces up to 8 1/3 to 25 years in state prison.

Pascuzzi, of Coxsackie, is accused of driving drunk after a night of drinking and watching fireworks. He first slammed into the back of a car driven by Brian T. Miller Jr., then 29, of Schenectady, before his vehicle spun, passenger side-first,
into the back of the semitrailer, Shanley told the jury.

Miller wasn’t seriously hurt.

Killed in the crash were Veverka, 23, of South Cairo, Greene County, and Alicia M. Tamboia, 24, of Dutchess County.

Family and friends of the victims, as well as Pascuzzi, filled the courtroom gallery Tuesday morning for opening statements in the trial.

Prosecutors argued that only Pascuzzi could have been driving the car he owned. In fact, Pascuzzi admitted as much both at the crash scene and at the hospital, Shanley argued.

Blood tests showed Pascuzzi’s blood alcohol content to be 0.18 percent, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08, at the time of the crash, Shanley said. Damage to the car, as well as injuries inflicted on Veverka show Veverka to have been in the front passenger seat, Shanley said.

Investigators found a piece of Veverka’s clothing embedded in the passenger-side door. The driver’s seat, Shanley told the jury, “in fact is the only seat where someone could have survived this crash.”

Shanley also cited and dismissed DNA tests that found Veverka’s DNA at multiple spots around the car, including on the driver’s side and above the passenger roof liner, suggesting the dispersal came from the violence of the crash.

Pascuzzi’s defense team, however, seized on that as an example of state police and prosecutors’ ignoring evidence. The tests showed Veverka’s DNA in key spots, including the shifter and the car key itself, defense attorney Michael McDermott argued. He also argued the DNA came from contact, not from blood.

“The DA and the New York State Police gave up,” defense attorney Michael McDermott told the jury. “They gave up on trying to find the truth. They just gave up.”

McDermott cited evidence that he said could have been tested and wasn’t, including a Thruway toll ticket found in the debris field.

Investigators have found DNA on toll tickets in other cases, McDermott told the jury, an apparent reference to a decade-old Albany County case in which such evidence proved important.

McDermott also questioned his client’s alleged statements to investigators, saying the investigators could have recorded them and didn’t, and that his client’s mental state makes whatever he said meaningless.

The trial is continuing before Judge Thomas Breslin in Albany County.

Categories: News, Schenectady County