Year later, UH tragedy leaves survivor, family devastated
Drunken driving remains problem for young adults
It was a tragedy that devastated the University of Houston Greek community last spring: A sophomore couple’s nighttime stroll abruptly ended when a suspected drunken driver struck them on a sidewalk.
Late on the night of April 14, 2016, Mark Tartaglio and Corina Burnett stepped out of a chartered event bus to go home from a sorority costume party. They planned to change out of their costumes at Burnett’s apartment, a three-minute walk down Calhoun.
They were deliberating whether to spend the rest of the evening at a friend’s karaoke party or watching “South Park” on TV when their world went dark.
They were hit from behind by a F-350 pickup truck driven by fellow Greek life member Marshall Patrick Schoen.
“I remember opening my eyes and seeing the flashing lights of the ambulance,” Burnett said in her first interview about the accident. “I didn’t know why, but I was saying my Social Security number over and over.”
For seven consecutive years, college-age motorists who opted to drink before driving have been responsible for at least onethird of all alcohol-related accidents in Houston, according to data obtained and analyzed by the Houston Chronicle. At least 300 people have died in those accidents.
In the April 2016 crash, Schoen had left the same party as Burnett and Tartaglio and was driving with his date when he sped around a car making a left turn.
He lost control of his truck and drove onto the sidewalk, hitting the young couple.
Burnett sustained a concussion, a broken vertebra
and cracked ribs. Tartaglio suffered a fatal head injury. Both were loaded onto stretchers and taken separately to Memorial Hermann Hospital.
“I asked ‘Where’s Mark, where’s Mark?’ and I was just sobbing. They wouldn’t tell me anything about Mark,” Burnett said.
Houston Police later determined Schoen’s bloodalcohol content was 0.11.
According to the Chronicle’s data, the fatality rate among college-age drunken drivers isn’t worsening, but it isn’t improving either. About 22 college-age motorists in Houston who drink before getting behind the wheel die each year.
A year after the crash that took Mark Tartaglio’s life, his family remains devastated. Schoen, now 24, awaits trial and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted of intoxicated manslaughter.
According to the Houston Police Department, Houston and Harris County lead the nation in fatal crashes related to drugs or alcohol. ‘Shattered Dreams’
Don Egdorf, the senior officer in the department’s DWI task force, has spent much of his career demonstrating to the city’s youth why drinking and driving should never be an option. When Egdorf is not at the scenes of reallife collisions, he’s helping facilitate fake crashes for HPD’s “Shattered Dreams” program, which calls high school students’ attention to the dangers of drinking and driving.
“There are kids when we go out and do these presentations that frankly don’t have a care in the world about what we’re saying,” Egdorf said. “Others, it affects them, plays a part in their decision-making.”
Egdorf was out of town the day of the UH crash, which he considers a good thing. He has known the Tartaglio family for 10 years, and his son played hockey with Mark.
“I would’ve been on that scene had I been in town. Luckily, I wasn’t,” Egdorf said.
Burnett was 19 the night of the accident. She was busy working at her new internship with a travel management company. In the weeks before the crash, she felt inexplicably on edge. She sensed something bad was to come in the midst of her life’s fast-paced excitement, but awaited the party eagerly.
With little time to prepare for that evening, she called Tartaglio with an unusual request.
“I was starting to work 30 hours a week so I panicked and was like, ‘Mark, I need red lipstick, I need powder.’ I still have the texts on my phone,” Burnett said. “So he went to Sephora and H-E-B for me and he was calling me and I had to tell him everything to get.”
Tartaglio arrived at Burnett’s apartment dressed as Danny from the movie “Grease.” Burnett greeted him as Sandy from “Grease.”
“The first thing he told me was, ‘You look so beautiful,’” Burnett said, her voice shaking.
To social media onlookers, Burnett is a blonde, successful college student with a dimpled smile. The hotel and restaurant management major enjoys sampling dishes from Houston’s varying food locales and documenting her experiences on Instagram.
As she thinks of Tartaglio, a soft-spoken 20-yearold with strong “Italian” eyebrows, she describes him in present tense and quietly sheds streams of tears.
At the party, Burnett and her boyfriend were celebrating several milestones. She was easing into her internship. He had just secured a job at the River Oaks Country Club. April 14 marked five months of dating.
“We were dancing. We were singing. We were jumping up and down, yelling at the top of our lungs,” Burnett said. “We had the time of our lives that night.”
What happened to them that night is a too common tragedy in the Houston area: From 2010 to 2016, 284 people have died in crashes involving a college-age driver who had been drinking. That’s an average of about 40 deaths per year, in addition to an average of about 118 injuries, according to data collected by the Chronicle.
Dipali Rinker, a research assistant professor in UH’s psychology department, had spent the last few years studying the drinking habits of college-age individuals when the accident on campus occurred.
She said the risky behaviors of drivers ages 18 to 22 aren’t entirely surprising.
“This is the time in your life, where you’re going to feel like nothing can touch you,” Rinker said. “It’s developmental.”
While it’s possible that someone crashes the first time they get behind the wheel while intoxicated, it’s not common, Rinker said. An individual who was caught driving under the influence has likely been drinking and driving for quite some time.
“There’s this Russian roulette,” Rinker said. “The more times something goes OK, the more we think it’s OK. Until it’s not OK.” Happier times
A year after Tartaglio’s death, his life permeates the Sugar Land home of Linda and Mark Tartaglio. Family portraits hung on their living room wall signify happier times, with the son they lost smiling beside his younger brother Matthew.
A collage of photos sits atop a table covered with flowers and miniature candles, left over from a recent gathering on the anniversary of Mark’s death.
More than 80 people attended the event held at their home.
Linda Tartaglio, who calls her son by his full name, Mark Andrew, said they were phoned about the crash around midnight on April 14 by one of their son’s fraternity brothers. She remembers the days they spent in the hospital afterward as minutes that dragged on like hours.
“We woke Matthew up,” Linda said. “I just had this feeling — I couldn’t leave Matthew here. All we knew was that (Mark) was hit by a car. We didn’t know if he was in the car. We didn’t know if he was walking. We kind of figured it was weird that they said he was hit by a car as opposed to in an accident.”
After racing to Memorial Hermann, the Tartaglios entered the lobby to find scores of Greek life members awaiting news about Mark.
“They slept on the floor, Linda said. “There had to have been 70-80 kids that night.”
Mark’s parents had been told he was getting a CT scan. But they were unaware how severe his injuries were until hospital employees approached them. Their son’s brain was dead, doctors told them, and nothing could be done to save his life.
After nearly three days in the hospital staying beside their son, praying for a miracle, the Tartaglios were forced to say goodbye.
“There were so many people in the hospital, I didn’t want to make an announcement. So I told a couple people and let it filter,” Mark’s father said.
A deeply private family, the Tartaglios spent the last year mourning. Overwhelmed by the support they received after his passing — strangers left dinner at their doorstep — they look back on Mark’s life with a profound appreciation.
“A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think of a different memory,” Mark’s father said. “Even the challenging ones, you look back and it’s like ‘How irrelevant is it now? Who cares if your room’s clean? Who cares if you put a dent in the garage with a hockey puck?’ We were so proud of him.”
In the month after her son’s death, Linda Tartaglio joined Burnett to participate in Mothers Against Driving Driving’s annual 5K event Walk Like MADD, which is held in more than 60 cities to spread awareness about the dangers of drunken driving.
Julio Zaghi, manager of victim services for MADD’s Southeast Texas office, said the organization encourages drinkers to plan ahead for a safe way home.
“Not every time people drink and drive does something happen, so people start thinking ‘It’s never going to happen to me. I’m a good person, so I’m not going to be able to kill or injure anybody,’ ” Zaghi said. “You can be the best person in the world and commit this error once, and that’s gonna be it.” Monthly appearances
On April 5, 2017, the driver — Marshall Patrick Schoen — gazed out the fourth floor window of the Harris County Criminal Courthouse, silently surveying the downtown skyline. Backlit by the 9 a.m. sun, he folded his arms in front of him.
He no longer attends UH. After a year of lying low, he looked slightly disheveled in a blue polo shirt and khaki slacks as he awaited news of his fate. He intermittently entered and left the courtroom throughout a pretrial hearing until his lawyer arrived.
Schoen appears in court each month beside Houston criminal attorney Brett Podolsky to verify he still lives in Harris County while trial preparations are underway.
He didn’t respond to a request for comment, walking quickly into the men’s restroom.
“He’s trying to live his life the best he can with this storm cloud overhead,” Podolsky said.
That morning, he was waiting for the crash accident report to be sure he obtained all the facts. At another routine court appearance on May 10, Podolsky again verified his client’s presence in the county.
Meanwhile, the Tartaglios find comfort in the belief that Mark is watching over them. They hope to set up a memorial fund in his name and spread awareness of the dangers of driving under the influence.
“On the highway, they always put the number of deaths on Texas roadways,” Linda said. “Mark Andrew was in that number last year. I forget what the total number was, but it bothered me because every time it went up, I knew he was one of them.”