Man admits to DUI crash, killing sleeping woman
NORRISTOWN » Trembling and weeping as he sat in court, a Franconia man admitted he was driving drunk and speeding when he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a township home, killing an elderly woman who was sleeping in her bed.
Joseph Gary Bezanis, 21, of the 700 block of Harleysville Pike, pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Court on Friday to charges of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence of a combination of alcohol and drugs in connection with a crash that occurred after midnight on April 6 in the 300 block of Harleysville Pike and killed 86-year-old Marianne Lambert.
“The force of impact was so strong it knocked out the cinderblock foundation and exterior wall of the first floor bedroom. It also ripped up the room’s flooring and dislodged the oil tank from its mounting in the basement located below that bedroom,” Assistant District Attorney Samantha Thompson said as she recited the factual basis for the charges.
With the charges, prosecutors alleged Bezanis was traveling 83 mph in an area posted at 40 mph and his blood-alcohol content was 0.172 percent, more than double the legal limit of 0.08 percent, at the time of the crash. Bezanis also had traces of marijuana in his system, prosecutors alleged.
“His car struck the wall, went through her bedroom on the first-floor and crushed her bed to the other side of the wall,” Thompson added. “It was a horrible, horrible crash taking the life of Ms. Lambert.”
Bezanis also pleaded guilty to multiple counts of recklessly endangering other persons for placing four other people inside the home in danger of death at the time of the crash.
Lambert’s heartbroken relatives, who carried a photograph of the victim into the courtroom with them, wept as Thompson described the horrific nature of the crash to a hushed courtroom.
Bezanis, who is represented by defense lawyer Edwin L. Guyer, voluntarily surrendered to authorities and county sheriff’s deputies handcuffed him and took him to the county jail where he will await a sentencing hearing before Judge Steven T. O’Neill later this year.
O’Neill ordered a background investigation report and said Bezanis will undergo drug and alcohol evaluations prior to sentencing.
Bezanis faces a possible maximum sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison on all the charges. Thompson vowed to seek a lengthy prison term against Bezanis, including a mandatory three-year prison term allowable under the law for the charge of homicide by vehicle while DUI.
“The commonwealth will be seeking the highest penalty we can within the law,” Thompson said.
Guyer said Bezanis, who was supported in court by his distraught parents and several other friends and relatives, is extremely remorseful and wanted to accept responsibility for his conduct. Bezanis, Guyer said, previously waived his preliminary hearing because he wanted to spare the victim’s family from having to hear testimony about the crash.
“He is very remorseful. He pled guilty because he knows he is guilty. He’s accepting his punishment by going into jail today. He’s very, very sorry for the tragedy and grief that he caused the family and their friends,” Guyer said. “He accepts his responsibility and that’s why he chose to go into jail today rather than wait for sentencing.”
With his guilty plea, according to testimony, Bezanis admitted that he went to at a Telford bar at 10 p.m. April 5 and consumed several beers and shots before leaving the bar at 11:50 p.m. in his 1995 Toyota Camry and proceeding west on Harleysville Pike.
After passing the intersection at Telford Pike, Bezanis failed to negotiate a curve and the passenger side front tire struck a raised curb, according to the criminal complaint.
The vehicle then struck a mailbox, jumped the raised curb, traveled across the lawns of four residences in the 300 block of Harleysville Pike and went airborne when it struck a raised section of the lawn at Lambert’s residence, vaulting the vehicle 21-feet into the side wall of the res-
idence, according to the arrest affidavit filed by Franconia Township Police Detective Sgt. George Moyer and Montgomery County Detective Robert Turner.
Lambert had been sleeping in a bed with the headboard located against the wall struck by the Toyota, detectives said.
“All of the bedroom contents were pushed and crushed into a small section of the room as the Toyota fully entered into the room,” Moyer and Turner wrote in the affidavit of probable cause.
Emergency personnel said they detected a strong odor of alcohol and other signs of impairment when they spoke with Bezanis at the scene, according to court papers.
Blood testing subsequently showed Bezanis had a 0.172 percent blood alcohol concentration along with the presence of THC, the major active component of marijuana and cannabis, investigators said.
“The defendant’s decision to use marijuana as well as drink at a local bar turned deadly when he got behind the wheel of his vehicle and drove impaired,” county District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said in a statement at the time of Bezanis’s arrest. “The defendant turned his vehicle into a lethal weapon that killed a grandmother as she was sleeping in her bed. His actions have left a family without a matriarch and have forever affected their feelings of safety in their own home.”