sábado, 24 de agosto de 2013

Police: Teen high on marijuana when he hit, killed motorcyclist - Sun-Sentinel

A Boca Raton high school student is facing a DUI manslaughter charge after police say he hit and killed a motorcyclist while high on marijuana.

Adam Daszkal, 17, was arrested Wednesday for a March 23 accident that killed 65-year-old Camil Paquet, a Canadian father of two and seasonal resident of Pompano Beach. The North Broward Preparatory School student was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail and released the next day on $50,000 bail. Neither the teen nor his parents could be reached for comment Thursday.

Daszkal told an officer he was under the influence of marijuana during the crash, according to a Boca Raton police arrest report. A blood test later confirmed that.

Police spokeswoman Sandra Boonenberg said Thursday that investigators had to wait for the results of that test and Paquet's autopsy report before making the arrest. That's why it took several months, she said.

At the time of the crash, Daszkal — who has clean driving and criminal records, according to state documents — was 16. He was driving two friends to the beach when he pulled out a marijuana cigarette and two of them smoked in his blue 2008 Infiniti, according to the arrest report.

The accident happened minutes after they finished passing the joint around, one of the friends told police.

It was shortly after 1:15 p.m., and Daszkal was looking for a parking spot on Palmetto Park Road. He made a U-turn, crashing into the orange Harley Davidson driven by Paquet. Witnesses told police Paquet was tossed into the air, landed on his head and rolled to a stop in the roadway. He was not wearing a helmet, according to the report.

People waiting in line at a nearby Subway ran to Paquet after seeing the collision.

One of the two passengers inside the Infiniti later told police he saw the body and thought, "This is bad." He was scared, so he grabbed his things from the trunk of the car, then "left the scene and did not look back," the report says. Days later, he saw Daszkal at school and asked what happened.

Daszkal and the other passenger stayed at the scene.

Investigators arrived to find Paquet lying on his side, bleeding profusely from his head. He was taken to Delray Medical Center in serious condition and later died.

Paquet was a father of two grown children, said Joey Passaro, 51, a neighbor and friend. He called Laval, Quebec, home, according to police.

Passaro said Paquet, who spent winters in South Florida with his longtime girlfriend, was "the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet." The day of his death, he left home to go for a quick motorcycle ride. He was supposed to go to dinner with family that night, Passaro said.

He said Paquet's family in Canada has struggled with the death. Passaro has, too, but he said he also empathizes with Daszkal.

"He's a kid — I'm sure he's a good kid," he said. "He just did something terribly wrong. But what do you do about that?"

As an officer read Daszkal his rights the day of the accident, he noticed the teen seemed to lose interest, gazing toward a parking lot and sidewalk. That might have been a result of the marijuana, he noted in the report.

"I pinched his black shirt to get his attention and explained he might want to pay attention to what's going on as this is something which will impact him for the rest of his life," the officer wrote in his report.

At the advice of his father, who came to the scene, Daszkal said he didn't want to talk without a lawyer present.

Adam Daszkal's father is Michael Daszkal, a prominent partner at South Florida CPA firm Daszkal Bolton LLP.

The day of the crash, Michael Daszkal was going to take the teens to the beach because he'd grounded his son for buying a glass pipe on his credit card, one of them told police, according to the report.

Instead, he decided the teen could drive.

Staff researcher Barb Hijek contributed to this report.

bshammas@tribune.com, 561-243-6531 or Twitter @britsham

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