Drunk driver who killed 4 Brock High School girls in 1998 released from Texas prison
A Fort Worth man who told a Parker County courtroom he deserved to die for killing four Brock teens in a 1998 highway accident stepped out of prison last month after serving his sentence.
Rickey Carter, 62, was discharged on Nov. 7. That date was 20 years to the day that he entered a Texas prison to serve four 20-year sentences for intoxication manslaughter in the deaths of students Mandi McWhorter, 15; Staci Lee, 16: Whitney Welch, 16; and Lacey Osina, 17. Three of the girls were basketball players at Brock High School, they made up half of the cheerleading squad, two were homecoming queens and all four were honor students.
The 20 years in prison concludes Carter’s punishment, a Parker County prosecutor said. He served the four sentences at the same time.
A family member of the teens said Carter has returned to live in North Texas, but neither the Fort Worth man nor his attorney, Jerry Loftin of Fort Worth, be reached for comment.
Saturday will mark 22 years since the Parker County crash took the lives of the four teenage girls on Dec. 19, 1998.
Carter took the stand in 2000 during the sentencing phase of his trial, sobbing as he told the families of the four girls that he deserved to die for killing their children and ruining their lives.
“You want to hate me? You have the right. Whatever you want, you have the right,” Carter said as he cried on the stand. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Carter had pleaded guilty to four counts of intoxication manslaughter. He was drunk when he got behind the wheel of his pickup truck on Dec. 19, 1998, and crashed head-on into a car carrying McWhorter, Lee, Welch and Osina.
Family members of the girls could not be reached Friday for comment on Carter’s release, but several relatives told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2005 that they had forgiven Carter, while others had not.
Lee’s mother, Vickie Cole, had not forgiven Carter.
“I walked right up to him to him and said, ‘You know, I’ll never forgive you for what you have done’,” Cole said she told Carter in the courtroom.
Lezlie Michael, McWhorter’s mother, told the Star-Telegram in 2005 she had forgiven Carter.
“I remember the very day that I did,” she said. “It was a huge, huge relief for me, like a thousand pounds had been lifted off ... I had to forgive him honestly and truthfully and wholeheartedly before I could heal and move on and have a halfway decent life.”
The plan for the girls on the night of Dec. 19, 1998, was to watch Christmas movies at McWhorter’s home.
The girls had driven to Weatherford after winning a basketball game against Graford to eat at Taco Bueno.
At about 11 p.m., the girls left Weatherford and headed west onto Spur 312, also known as Ranger Highway, and headed for McWhorter’s home.
Carter was driving home from a deer lease in Erath County.
Authorities said Lee, who was driving Welch’s Nissan Maxima, tried to avoid Carter’s pickup by pulling on the shoulder when he swerved into her lane. But they still collided head-on.
Lee and Welch died at the scene. Osina and McWhorter were taken to Campbell Memorial Hospital in Weatherford then to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth.
The 15-year-old McWhorter died on Dec. 20, 1998, roughly 11 hours after the wreck.
On the morning of Dec. 22, 1998, the Osinas said goodbye to their 17-year-old daughter.
It took two years before Carter appeared in court to face his punishment in the case.
He pleaded guilty in 2000 to the four cases of intoxication manslaughter. Authorities said Carter’s blood-alcohol level at the time of the wreck was measured at 0.16, but his defense attorney has said another test showed it was 0.12.
In a 2005 interview with the Star-Telegram, Carter’s attorney, Loftin, called Carter “as good a citizen as there ever was.” He noted that Carter took minority children whose parents were drug addicts into his home, and he supported the schools and community.
“His life was shattered and destroyed,” Loftin said in that interview.
At that time, Parker County Assistant District Attorney Jeff Swain said the only way to have sentences in intoxication manslaughter cases run consecutively — meaning more time served in prison — was to have a separate jury trial for each victim.
“District Attorney Don Schnebly and I had extensive discussions with the families of each of the girls,“ Swain said in an email to the Star-Telegram this week. “Two of the families were adamant that they could not emotionally survive multiple trials, while two felt the opposite.”
During the punishment phase of Carter’s trial, an agreement was reached that each family would be allotted 30 minutes to say whatever they wanted and offer any exhibits they desired without questions or intervention by attorneys, Swain said.
“The result was that large portions of our trial felt more like a memorial service,” Swain said.
In the Texas legislative session that followed the Carter trial, the law was changed to permit intoxication manslaughter cases to be tried together and the sentences to run consecutively instead of concurrently at the discretion of the trial judge, Swain said.
“That piece of legislation was influenced by the difficult choice that the victims’ families in the Carter case had to make,” the prosecutor said. “We simply didn’t think it was fair that they had to make that decision in the first place.”
The Carter case also influenced a bill that reduced the legal alcohol concentration level in Texas from 0.10 down to 0.08.
Swain said he has been a prosecutor for about 25 years, and he will never forget the Carter case.
“Seeing the tragedy of four amazing girls losing their lives due to an act of reckless indifference was heartbreaking,” Swain said. “It was incredibly difficult to watch their parents grieve their loss, which they did every day that we were working with them.”
Scholarship funds at Weatherford College and the Brock school district have been established in the girls’ honor.
This report contains information from Star-Telegram archives.
This story was originally published December 18, 2020 at 3:53 PM.
