22-year-old Ohio driver Matthew Cordle who made an online video confessing to causing a fatal wrong-way crash after drinking heavily has been charged with aggravated vehicular homicide. Read the details inside.
On June 22, Matthew Cordle was drunk and driving a car. On that day, he killed a 61-year-old man named Vincent Canzani by his car. At the time of the crash, Cordle’s blood alcohol level was measured at 0.19, while the legal limit is 0.08. No one except his friends who were with him inside the car knew that Cordle had murdered a man unless he confessed it in a YouTube video.
The video starts with Cordle’s face pixelated out and his voice digitally altered to conceal his identity. He begins the confession saying “I killed a man. I was out with some friends, we were all drinking really heavily, just hopping from bar to bar, just trying to have a good time, and I lost control.”
Cordle ends the video confession by “begging” viewers to not drink and drive. He said, “I can’t bring Mr. Canzani back, and I can’t erase what I’ve done, but you can still be saved. Your victims can still be saved. So, please make the promise to never drink and drive.” Here is that confession video which has already been seen by more than 1.3 million people.
Last Monday, a grand jury in Ohio decided that Matthew Cordle should be charged with aggravated vehicular homicide and hence has already been taken under police custody. Cordle’s lawyer George Breitmayer has said that Cordle confessed on video because “he genuinely wanted to raise awareness about the serious issues surrounding drinking and driving.” Breitmayer also said that “We’re hoping that the judge who views this case takes all the factors into consideration: personal and, I guess, national and all the, I guess, greater issues at play in this case.”
Although Cordle hasn’t faced court yet, but it is expected that the judge would send him to prison for a minimum of 2 years if convicted.
Source: The Verge
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