Amanda’s Mom Supports Driver’s Reduced Charge

The mother of Amanda Arthur, the Newport Beach cheerleader who awoke after an 11-week coma following a tragic car wreck last May, said she agrees with a judge’s decision to reduce charges against the teenage designated driver accused of causing the crash.

Chris Maese broke her silence on the fate of Jason Rausch after Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey reduced a charge of felony vehicular homicide to a misdemeanor, a major development in a case that has attracted deep interest in the community.

“I think it’s a fair judgment to reduce it to a misdemeanor,” Maese said. “I think he’s a good boy.”

Dickey’s ruling reducing the charge came on Thursday, culminating an unusual seven-day preliminary hearing that convinced the judge that Rausch should not be tried as a felon. The ruling stunned Rausch, who could have faced six years in prison under a felony and visibly angered friends and relatives of another teen who was killed in the wreck.

Rausch was driving a speeding 1989 Chevy Blazer packed with nine other partying teenagers on May 23 when it flipped and crashed, killing classmate Donny Bridgman and causing potentially permanent injuries to Arthur and classmate Daniel Townsend.

Bridgman’s mother, Vickie Bridgman, an Orange County deputy district attorney, made an emotional plea in court to have Rausch bound over for a trial on the felony charge. After Dickey rejected it, she stormed from the courtroom with her daughter and friend Diana Townsend, mother of injured teen Daniel Townsend.

Neither could be reached for comment Friday.

Maese never attended the preliminary hearing and avoided addressing the question of Rausch’s fate.

“I’ve chosen to keep myself focused on God and what’s going on in my family,” Maese said.

Her daughter was critically injured in the May accident and was in a coma for nearly three months. She created a local sensation by awaking and going on to win election as her high school homecoming queen, but she remains in intensive treatment for potentially permanent brain injury.

Maese said her family doesn’t watch commercial television, using the television set only to watch videos, and doesn’t subscribe to newspapers. But she said she is supportive of Rausch, who frequently visits her daughter.

“He’ll come over and visit her. He’ll play games that we have to help her cognitive progress,” she said.

Rausch, who was not drinking the night of the accident, has been at the center of debate in the Newport Beach and Costa Mesa communities as students, parents and school officials try to sort out questions of responsibility that are still lingering.

“I don’t believe the decision of the judge has really spoken to the underlying issues in the community,” said Mac Bernd, the outgoing superintendent of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

“I think we still have got to achieve a consensus on the place of alcohol in our community,” he said. “We haven’t achieved understanding yet.”

School board member Dana Black, also the mother of a Newport Harbor High School student, said school officials and parents still must grapple with the question of drinking by teenagers.

“Nobody I know wants Jason to be the only one who pays a penalty,” Black said. “If your kid’s out there drinking, you need to figure out where you draw the line.”

She said school policies on “zero tolerance” have helped her as a parent to warn her sons about the dangers of excessive partying.

“I tell my kids: ‘If you get popped, you’re going to pay the price--and it’s going to be as the school district says, and it’s going to be on your record.’ ”