Suit: Restaurant served intoxicated woman

WEST CHESTER >> It was Saturday night and Jennifer Lynn DiCecco was having a fine time.

She had arrived at Pietro’s Prime restaurant in downtown West Chester around 9:30 p.m. on Feb. 10, 2018, and immediately began ordering drinks. She hadn’t had anything to drink beforehand, but in the two hours before she left the place to drive to her West Goshen home she drank enough to put her blood alcohol level at around .20 percent, more than two times the legal limit.

And more than that, according to a lawsuit filed last week in Chester County Common Pleas Court, she wasn’t being shy about her inebriation.

She had red eyes, slurred speech, was loud and boisterous, staggered while she walked through the popular restaurant’s rooms, bumped into other people she passed and was seen dancing while no other patrons were dancing. At one point around 11 p.m., she flailed her arms and knocked a glass out of another patron’s hand and sent it crashing to the floor. “Yet the employees or bartenders of Pietro’s Prime continued to furnish or provide alcoholic beverages to DiCecco,” according to the complaint.

At 11:30 p.m., she walked out of the restaurant on West Market Street “in a severely intoxicated state,” while still carrying a pilsner-style glass containing beer that someone at the restaurant had served her and got into her 2018 Volvo.

Less than 15 minutes later, the Volvo collided head-on with a 2007 Ford Escape on a stretch of North Pottstown Pike outside West Chester known as Cemetery Hill because of the number of graveyards there. She had been “flying” north on the two-lane road, hitting speeds over 95 miles per hour, before crossing into the southbound lanes and slamming into the Ford.

Both people in the Ford, Roque Rangel-Marmolejo and Maria De Los Angeles Guitierrez-Rangel, were killed in the violent impact.

The pilsner glass was found lying on the open door of the Volvo’s glove compartment, beer pooling in its mouth.

On Friday, attorneys for the deceased couple filed the lawsuit against DiCecco and Pietro’s on behalf of the couple’s estate and their four children. The complaint contends that not only was DiCecco negligent in her actions that resulted in the death of the two West Chester residents, but that Pietro’s had also been negligent in serving her alcohol while she was visibly intoxicated, in violation of state law.

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys Joel Goldberg and Charles P. Maloney of the law firm of Goldberg, Goldberg & Maloney of West Chester, asks for monetary damages on behalf of the Rangels’ estate in excess of $50,000 on four counts, including negligence and wrongful death.

A message left for Marisa Giunta, owner of Pietro’s, was not immediately returned Monday. DiCecco is currently housed at the State Correctional Institution

at Cambridge Springs, serving a sentence of 6½ to 13 years in prison for two counts of homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence. She pleaded guilty earlier this year.

The suit has been assigned to President Judge Jacqueline Carroll Cody.

Police investigators found that DiCecco, 48, had been speeding north on the road when the crash occurred, on her way home on nearby Retford Lane less than four miles away, after a night out drinking at a restaurant in West Chester.

Information taken from the airbag control computer in her 2018 Volvo showed the car had been traveling at speeds up to 97 miles per hour in the five seconds before the impact.

Officer Joseph Virgillo said in an arrest affidavit that DiCecco’s Volvo S90 had crossed into the southbound lane of traffic, hitting the 2007 Ford Escape head on and killing Rangel-Marmolejo and Rangel-Gutierrez. Officers who attended to DiCecco at the scene said they could detect an odor of alcohol on her breath when they spoke with her while she was in her car. One officer reported that he saw a pilsner beer glass sitting sideways on the open door of her glove compartment, with liquid pooling around the mouth of the glass.

DiCecco, who was taken to Paoli Memorial Hospital for treatment of injuries she suffered in the crash, told West Goshen Detective Cheryl Taylor that she had been drinking that evening, and had two fireballs on ice, a drink that combines cinnamon and whiskey. She said she was “flying home on Route 100,” and “must have fallen asleep” before losing control of her car.

DiCecco was arrested and charged on April 26.

DiCecco was not responsive to police at the scene, and just stared into the distance as police asked if she was OK, the criminal complaint stated. The complaint filed by Goldberg and Maloney alleges that when her vehicle’s onboard emergency support system called her to tell her that first responders were on their way to help, she said the response was “not necessary” and that she was “OK.”

Later, at the hospital, she was interviewed by Taylor and had to be told repeatedly that the occupants of the car that she struck had been killed. She became emotional, the detective reported, but seemed to have trouble remembering and made repetitive statements. Taylor said she also had an odor of alcohol on her even after the crash, and had bloodshot eyes, a flushed face, and slurred speech.

A witness to the crash who was behind the Ford Escape said that DiCecco’s Volvo did not turn with a curve in the road and instead drifted over into the oncoming lane of traffic before colliding with the Ford. The couple did not have time to react before the collision, the witness said.

DiCecco was arrested and charged on April 26. In addition to finding alcohol in her bloodstream, police said they also found evidence of amphetamine use, according to court documents.