Jury Recommends 16-Years for Driver in 27-Death Crash

A jury on Friday recommended 16 years in prison for the man who caused the nation’s worst drunken-driving accident, but families of some of Larry Mahoney’s 27 victims said it is not enough.

Mahoney, 36, was led in handcuffs out of the Carroll County Courthouse and taken to the local jail after Circuit Judge Charles Satterwhite discontinued his bail.

Satterwhite is to sentence Mahoney formally in February. The judge may give Mahoney a lighter sentence, but he may not exceed the jury’s recommendation.

On Thursday, Mahoney was convicted on 27 counts each of second-degree manslaughter and first-degree wanton endangerment, 12 of first-degree assault, 14 of second-degree wanton endangerment and one of drunken driving.

The recommended sentences totaled 611 years, but the jury opted to have them run concurrently. That effectively imposed on Mahoney 16 years of a possible 20-year sentence for assault, the offense that carried the stiffest penalty. He would be eligible for parole consideration in eight years under Kentucky law.

The jury determined that Mahoney caused the crash of a church-owned school bus on May 14, 1988, as he drove on the wrong side of Interstate 71 when intoxicated.

The crash five miles south of Carrollton caused a fire that killed 24 children and three adults who were returning to the Radcliff First Assembly of God Church. Forty people escaped, but 12 children suffered severe burns.

Lawyers noted the irony of Mahoney’s being sentenced to a longer term for the burn injuries, which were covered by the assault charges, than for the deaths. The maximum sentence for second-degree manslaughter is 10 years, which the jury recommended on each of the 27 counts. But that was made moot by the recommendation that the prison terms be concurrent, not consecutive.

The jury’s verdict and sentence recommendations were “a big letdown” for the victims’ families, because the state had charged Mahoney with murder in each of the deaths, William Nichols said. His son, William Joseph Nichols Jr., 17, died in the bus fire.

“I’ve forgiven Larry Mahoney, but he’s got to pay for his crime, and eight years is not enough,” Nichols said.

Assistant Atty Gen. Paul Richwalsky, who prosecuted Mahoney, said he was disappointed both by the jury’s refusal to convict the chemical plant worker of murder and by the recommended sentence.

“I asked for consecutive (sentences) but they gave concurrent,” Richwalsky said. “I thought all the carnage . . . was worth more than eight years.”

William Summers, lead attorney on Mahoney’s three-man defense team, said that he was “basically . . . pleased with the verdict.”

“We beat 27 murder counts,” Summers said. “At least (Mahoney) can hold his head up. He’s not a mass murderer.”

Mahoney is remorseful regardless of the length of his prison sentence, Summers said. “If putting him away for life would take away some of the hurt, he’d do it,” Summers said.

One of Mahoney’s last requests while waiting for the jury’s verdict on Thursday was to meet with Kentucky State Police Trooper Henry (Sonny) Cease, who was the case’s lead investigator.

Cease had to remove the victims’ bodies the day after the crash, when the bus was hauled to a temporary morgue at Carrollton’s National Guard Armory.

In their brief meeting, Mahoney “just said he holds no grudges against me,” Cease said. “I told him I feel the same way he does: I wish we weren’t here.”