Driver pleads guilty in car crash that killed three passengers at Maine park, feds say
A driver pleaded guilty after he crashed his car — resulting in the deaths of three passengers — while driving three times the legal speed limit along a road in Acadia National Park in Maine, federal authorities said.
The former New Jersey resident told investigators he went out drinking at a bar and took a few shots of alcohol before the 2019 crash, according to court documents.
30-year-old Praneeth Manubolu, who’s a citizen of India, pleaded guilty to three counts of manslaughter, two counts of operating under the influence and once count of unsafe operation of a motor vehicle on Jan. 31, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine said in a news release.
“It has been a long two and a half years of litigation,” Manubolu’s attorney Walter McKee told McClatchy News in a statement. “Praneeth has fully accepted responsibility for his decisions that fateful night, and we are totally focused on sentencing now.”
Manubolu was living in New Jersey on a student visa when he crashed his car driving 75 mph on a 25 mph section of Park Loop Road during the “early morning hours of August 31, 2019,” according to the news release.
New York City residents Lenny Fuchs, 36, Laura Leong, 30, and Zeeshan Mohammed, 27 were killed in the crash, The Associated Press reported.
“His blood alcohol content was determined to be .095% approximately 90 minutes after the crash with the legal limit being .08%,” prosecutors said.
When police officers initially arrived at the crash site, they “noted the strong odor of alcoholic beverages coming from” Manubolu, court documents state. He “had a few cuts and scrapes.”
Manubolu is accused of telling a police officer that “he met up with his friends and had gone drinking at a bar” and took “a couple shots of alcohol” before the crash, according to court documents. He told a park ranger “he lost control of his vehicle on a curve and hit a tree.”
He also reportedly admitted that one of his passengers warned him about the curve but “that he failed to slow down in time.”
Manubolu faces up to eight years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 for each manslaughter count, the news release said, with the possibility of several more months in prison for the other charges.
He will be sentenced after a presentence investigation report is completed by the U.S. Probation Office, according to prosecutors.
This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 5:38 PM with the headline "Driver pleads guilty in car crash that killed three passengers at Maine park, feds say."
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