A Blasdell man was sentenced Monday to six months in jail and five years’ probation for a car crash that killed one girl and injured two others earlier this year.
Bradley V. Maloney, 19, wiped away tears as he listened to the victims’ parents describe their pain.
During his turn to speak, Maloney looked at the victims’ family members and friends in the packed Buffalo courtroom and tearfully apologized. “I regret that night ever happened,” he said.
In May, Maloney pleaded guilty in Erie County Court to first-degree vehicular manslaughter, first- and second-degree vehicular assault and driving while intoxicated for the Jan. 28 high-speed crash on the Seneca Nation Cattaraugus Reservation. Three Hamburg girls, all sitting in the back seat, were thrown from the car: Angela Keim, 14, who died; Elizabeth Szewczyk, 13, who suffered critical injuries and still needs round-the-clock care at home; and Summer Locking, 16, who was less seriously injured.
Erie County Judge Michael F. Pietruszka said he accepted the sentencing recommendations of the Probation Department.
“What we have here is a tragedy on a lot of different levels,” Pietruszka said.
During the hearing, Maloney sought to explain why he failed a urine test in June, which revealed that he had been drinking alcohol, as he awaited sentencing for the drunken-driving crash.
“The reason I drank, used alcohol the second time was to get away from everything,” Maloney said.
At the time of the urine test, Maloney had been allowed to remain free after his guilty plea but was ordered not to drink or operate a motor vehicle as conditions of his release. He has been in custody since the failed urine test.
Maloney’s lawyer, Anthony J. Lana, told the judge that his client has suffered from “a classic case of post-traumatic stress disorder” and turned to alcohol because he was haunted by images of the crash and his guilty feelings.
“He already has a life sentence,” Lana said. “He will be carrying this with him the rest of his life.”
Although he is 19 years old, the quiet and shy special-education student is “mentally much younger,” Lana said of Maloney.
Lana described Maloney as “an outcast in his age group” who sought friendship where he could find it, including from younger teenage girls who needed rides to parties.
Prosecutors and Erie County sheriff’s investigators have previously said Maloney admitted to drinking at least six beers earlier in the evening and to speeding when he lost control of his Ford Mustang convertible on a sharp curve in slushy conditions at Versailles Plank and Snow roads.
Authorities have said 16 young people had left a drinking party in Buffalo and were driving in a caravan of three cars to a cottage in Chautauqua County when the crash occurred on the reservation, south of the Town of Brant.
“He was following two cars of teenagers,” Lana said. “He didn’t even know where he was going.”
Lana asked the judge not to sentence Maloney to state prison, which he said would be a death sentence.
“There’s no way on God’s green earth he could survive in state prison,” Lana told the judge.
During her victim-impact statement, Michele Peckey, Elizabeth’s mother, told Maloney that he should have made wiser decisions, given his age.
But despite the emotional and financial toll her daughter’s injury has placed on the family, Peckey asked for mercy for Maloney.
“May we forgive as God has forgiven,” she said.
George Kuntz, Angela’s father, said he initially had sympathy for Maloney. “I know he didn’t do it on purpose,” Kuntz said. “But the kid goes and drinks again? Really?”
“Your Honor, it’s in your hands,” an emotional and trembling Kuntz said during his victim-impact statement. “I’m left with this big hole in my life. I just can’t believe she’s gone. He took my poor baby away.” After the sentencing, Kuntz said he thought Maloney deserved a longer incarceration, “something with more of an impact.”
Maloney’s lawyer portrayed Maloney as mentally slower than he is, Kuntz said. Others the same age as Maloney are serving state prison time for crimes, he said.
Kuntz also said he did not like how Maloney blamed images from the fatal crash for his subsequent drinking.


email: plakamp@buffnews.com