Charge Reduced for Driver in Crash That Killed Student

Despite a tearful plea by the mother of a teenager killed when a vehicle carrying 10 classmates flipped and crashed during a night of partying, a judge Thursday reduced the charge against the driver from a felony to a misdemeanor.

The ruling by Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey means that 18-year-old Jason Rausch of Newport Beach faces a maximum of one year in County Jail instead of up to six years in prison.

“The purpose of imprisonment is punishment,” Dickey said at the conclusion of a seven-day preliminary hearing. “Does Mr. Rausch need to be sentenced to prison to punish him? I don’t think so.”

Rausch is not free, however. In reducing the charge from felony vehicular manslaughter to a misdemeanor count of vehicular manslaughter, Dickey ordered the teenager to stand trial at the same time on two companion misdemeanor charges of reckless driving causing injury. A pretrial conference was scheduled for Jan. 26 in Municipal Court in Newport Beach.

Rausch was the designated driver and had not been drinking that night in May when he and a group of Newport Harbor High School students left a party just before midnight and got into two cars, including 18-year-old Donny Bridgman’s 1989 Chevrolet Blazer. That car was stopped by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy who questioned Rausch, looked in the Blazer and, finding cans of beer, made the teenagers pour it out before letting them leave on their own.

Rather than returning home, however, the teenagers went to a liquor store, used fake identifications to buy more beer and packed into the two cars to drive to a nearby park, listen to music and drink.

On the way home, Rausch was again behind the wheel with nine other teenagers in the Blazer, including four in the luggage pit. Only two wore safety belts. While speeding around sharp curves on Irvine Avenue, the Blazer spun and flipped, throwing eight people onto the pavement and rolling at least twice, coming to rest 140 feet later.

Bridgman died at the scene and two other teenagers suffered critical, potentially permanent brain damage. Rausch was charged with felony vehicular manslaughter and two counts of misdemeanor reckless driving.

Some of the teenagers testified against Rausch, but defense attorney Jennifer Keller attacked their testimony as that of drunk teenagers whose observations were suspect. She maintained throughout the hearing that the crash was caused by the overloaded Blazer that had been jacked up in height and had defective brakes and steering, and by the roadway, which she said was wet and improperly lighted and banked.

Prosecutor James Dutton of the attorney general’s office tried to prove that the road was dry at the time of the crash, but the issue was never resolved.

Dickey said his decision to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor hinged on his personal observations of Rausch and whether he intended to hurt anybody.

“The whole thing was a tragedy,” Dickey said. “In this particular case, there are many people who bear some responsibility, if not in a legal sense, then in a moral sense. I’m not referring only to the young people in the vehicle either.”

He described Rausch as “a young man who has not had any prior criminal convictions, was not under the influence of anything, who was not doing anything that can be described as intentional.”

“I can’t conceive of any reasonable judge sending Mr. Rausch to state prison under these circumstances,” Dickey said. “A year in the County Jail as the maximum sentence is sufficient. That could be the result of this case.”