Man Charged in 27 Bus Deaths Offers Apology

The man charged with 27 counts of murder in the nation’s worst drunken-driving accident took the stand Thursday and apologized to family members of some of the dead.

“I really am sorry, and I mean this,” Larry Mahoney said calmly at the conclusion of more than an hour of testimony. Members of the victims’ families and Mahoney’s family broke into tears.

“I would probably feel the same way that you feel about this,” the 36-year-old factory worker said. “I wanted to let you know I really am sorry. I mean it . . . . I know it’s not going to make you feel any different toward me.”

Behind Mahoney on the witness stand was a large seating chart of the church bus, with color photographs and names of the 67 passengers. The names of the 24 children and three adults killed in the fiery crash were designated with a black letter D .

Mahoney faces multiple life sentences if convicted on 27 counts of murder, 42 counts of wanton endangerment, 12 counts of assault and a count of drunken driving.

Mahoney said he has no recollection of leaving a small drinking party and colliding with a crowded church bus on Interstate 71 on May 14, 1988. Mahoney, who was testifying for the first time in the trial, said that he had had no intention of getting drunk that day.

“It’s a fact I was involved in an accident, but I don’t remember seeing the bus,” Mahoney said. “I remember waking up in the hospital.”

Mahoney said that he “hates” hard alcohol because it irritates his ulcer. He remembered asking for a beer at the party. None was available, and a man he had just met offered him a mixed drink.

“I took a big drink of it and I coughed and choked on it,” he said. Some of the men laughed at him, he recalled.

He then recalled drinking a soda from a glass to get the taste of the alcohol out of his mouth.

The prosecution contends that an intoxicated Mahoney, driving the wrong way on the interstate, crashed into the bus. The defense contends that the design of the bus, built before federal safety standards were tightened, contributed to the deaths, which examiners said resulted from the fire, not the original crash.

In earlier testimony, the defense’s accident reconstruction expert, Wilbur R. Meredith III, was cross-examined about his conclusion that Mahoney’s pickup truck first hit a Cadillac beside the bus and then struck the bus.

In its accident reconstruction, the Kentucky State Police, relying on eyewitness accounts, accident scene evidence and other information, said that Mahoney’s truck first hit the bus and then collided with the Cadillac.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Paul Richwalsky Jr. said the defense’s version of the wreck “is an attempt, I think, to make (Mahoney) one step removed” by showing that the truck was deflected into the bus by the Cadillac.

William Summers, Mahoney’s defense lawyer, disagreed. “It is not to take any responsibility from Larry Mahoney hitting the bus,” Summers said.

Summers said he did not challenge the credibility of blood tests that showed that Mahoney’s blood-alcohol level was 0.21--twice the legal limit in Kentucky--at the time of the wreck.