Crime Scene

Anyone who has kept tabs on Lower Hudson Valley events in recent months has likely heard of “RoccerMom,” the Yorktown mother who was just jailed for the drunken-driving crash last year that killed her daughter’s 16-year-old friend. Her real name is Ann Marie Ciarcia, the 47-year-old wife of former Yorktown Town Engineer Dan Ciarcia. The Sept. 18 predawn crash, which came after Ciarcia spent the night clubbing with her own teenaged daughter and her friend, captured more than a few headlines nationwide as well.

After all that media attention, the entire episode came to an end on Friday, when Ciarcia “was sentenced to state prison”:http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703310392 in the case. She had pleaded guilty to manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter and DWI on Jan. 5, and was sentenced Friday to 16 months to 4 years in prison.

Ciarcia wept as she read a lengthy apology to Westchester County Court Judge Robert DiBella. Also looking on was her 15-year-old daughter, Alexa, and Carol Cornish, the mother of teenager Emily Cornish, the girl killed in the crash. Nearby sat Ed Cook of Yorktown, a U.S. Navy veteran and Con Edison worker whose 1994 Honda was hit head-on by Ciarcia.

If anything is evident from this case is that there were no winners. Carol Cornish lost her only child. Alexa Ciarcia and her siblings lost their mom for a period of time. She will likely not return as the same person. Mr. Cook, I suppose, was left scarred, if not physically then possibly emotionally by the horror of being seriously injured and trapped in his car for what must have seemed an eternity.

And I was struck by Carol Cornish’s words at the sentencing. She had written a statement, but was “too emotional” to read it herself, so she asked Westchester Assistant District Attorney Christine O’Connor, whose hands shook as she read, to do so for her. After speaking of the painful loss of her own daughter, Cornish turned her attention to Ciarcia’s daughter:

“Alexa will always have the memory of what happened that night and of trying to revive Emily before the emergency services arrived, and also that her mother caused this. No one deserves that, especially at the hands of the parent whose job it is to protect them. That night, Ann Marie also voluntarily took on the job of protecting my precious Emily.”

Ann Marie Ciarcia sobbed while the statement was read. Both women seemed fragile and broken, as did the crash’s surviving teenager. Her mom has probably seen her name in headlines for the last time — at least for a while. The story caught on, in part, because Ann Marie Ciarcia seemed to be reliving her youth. She had a home page on myspace.com, where she raved about her love for clubbing and punk bands from her younger years. It’s also where the name “RoccerMom” came from, a witty play on words that suddenly seemed to be made for tabloid headlines.

Several months ago, following the crash, Ciarcia put restrictions on her myspace.com site so it could only be accessed by invitation. Too many reporters had logged on after the crash and quoted from it. But one thing that is still visible to anyone who logs onto the site is that the name was changed. RoccerMom is now RocBottom.