MENDON — An 18-year-old driver was charged with manslaughter Wednesday after his car slammed into trees in western New York, killing a college freshman visiting home for Thanksgiving and critically injuring another teenager.
Garrett Ockan had been drinking before the accident at around 1 a.m. Wednesday in the Rochester suburb of Mendon, Monroe County sheriff's deputies said. He was arraigned on charges of vehicular manslaughter and driving while intoxicated.
A not guilty plea was entered on Ockan's behalf. A student at Monroe Community College in Rochester, Ockan was accompanied to court by his parents and was freed without bail.
His family has retained an attorney but she was unable to attend the hearing, Mendon Town Court clerk Susan Rocklein said.
The car was carrying five 18-year-olds when it veered off a two-lane road and struck trees near Mendon Ponds Park, 10 miles south of Rochester.
Killed was James Spencer, an engineering student at Clarkson University in northern New York. John Fisher was in guarded condition at a Rochester hospital, and the other three men were treated for minor injuries.
James Spencer Sr. told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (http://on.rocne.ws/) that his son was "an amazing kid," a star hockey and lacrosse player and a Big Brothers volunteer who was planning a career in global supply-chain management.
"He was just a leader and had a tremendous amount of friends," he said.
"Everyone knows what a good athlete he was, but the people who know him also know what a caring, sensitive person he was," his uncle, Tim Spencer, told the newspaper. "Our lives will never be the same, but we'll never forget him. Man, I loved that kid."
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