Friends Mourn Boy Killed in Jeep Accident

Hundreds of friends gathered Friday to mourn the death of a 9-year-old Calabasas boy killed when he was catapulted from the back of a Jeep driven by a man whose license had been revoked for drunk-driving violations.

Mothers, fathers, coaches and teachers squeezed into the pews of the Tanach Chapel at Mount Sinai Memorial Park near Universal City and cried for Matthew Mazza, a playful, wild boy who wore his meals on his clothes and reduced his schoolmates to giggles with his hooded sweatshirt imitations of “Moleman.”

But what was most striking were the children. Dozens of them.

Little girls in black dresses. Boys in baseball uniforms. Children so young that many of them were shorter than the shovels they used to pitch dirt onto the casket of their dead friend as they said goodbye.

The rabbi said he had never seen so many children at a funeral.

Matthew was killed Sunday night in the Dove Spring area of Red Rock Canyon State Park, according to the California Highway Patrol.

He was there for the Memorial Day weekend to ride motorcycles with another family, the McCarthys.

One of the McCarthys’ sons, 14-year-old Colin, ran out of gas on his motorcycle. His father, Joseph D. McCarthy, got into his 1959 Willys Jeep to retrieve the motorcycle, taking Matthew with him, along with Colin and Chris Cunningham, 29, of Pico Rivera.

McCarthy drove. Cunningham sat next to him. The two boys were in back holding the roll bar. No one wore seat belts, said CHP Officer Bobbi Record of the CHP’s Mojave Station.

McCarthy, 45, was not familiar with the area and had been drinking before getting into the Jeep, Record said.

The Jeep sped over the poorly maintained roads, bouncing over the potholes and the washboard dirt bumps, Record said.

Witnesses said the Jeep was going between 50 and 60 mph when it hit a 3-by-15-foot culvert.

The Jeep flew into the air, and the two boys were thrown from the back seat. Matthew’s body was found 138 feet from the culvert, Record said. He was taken by air ambulance to Antelope Valley Hospital, where he died of massive head wounds.

The driver and the two other passengers were also injured. Cunningham broke his back and injured his arm, Colin injured his back, and McCarthy broke his shoulder, Record said. After his release from the hospital, McCarthy was arrested on suspicion of felony driving under the influence, felony child endangerment and felony vehicular manslaughter, Record said.

He was booked at the Kern County Jail and released on $30,000 bail. Record said results of McCarthy’s blood-alcohol test from the day of the accident are not yet available.

Department of Motor Vehicles records show that McCarthy’s license was suspended in September 1997 and revoked in January 1998 for separate drunk-driving incidents. McCarthy was on probation for a driving-under-the-influence conviction through January 2003, records show.

Friends said Matthew’s parents, Steve and Dee Dee Mazza, who are divorced, were unaware of the drunk-driving incidents. Dee Dee Mazza declined comment.

But at the funeral Friday, there was no talk of blame, or outrage.

Instead, those who spoke chose to remember Matthew, the gray-eyed boy who lived to make people laugh.

His father described Matthew as a blond, stocky, raspy-voiced boy’s boy who attacked life and leaped into the swimming pool curled into a cannonball without ever dipping his toe in the water to see how cold it was.

His computer teacher, Steve Vickers, talked of his daredevil spirit, and his kind nature, and asked him to save him a Rollerblading lesson in heaven.

Rabbi Stewart Vogel, of Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, was the only one to allude to how Matthew died.

“We must think about the responsibility that goes along with drinking and the danger of driving under the influence,” he said. “Now, when we think of this, unfortunately, we have an image.”

Ann Cohen, a Mazza family friend, said parents don’t always know when to intervene on behalf of their children.

“As a mom, and someone involved in the community, what do you do as a parent? Do you say, ‘Do you have a gun? Can I see your license to see if it’s current?’ What do you do?”

Times staff writer Scott Glover contributed to this story.