By JUDY RATTNER
He has been cleared of all charges relating to an automobile accident on Feb. 9 of this year in Garden City, that took the life of South Side senior Michael Holmes, DeMarco's childhood friend, and caused only minor injuries to DeMarco and two teenage girls who were also passengers in the car.
Arrested and charged with driving while ability impaired, the case against DeMarco was dismissed on June 13 in District Court, Part 7 before Judge Sandra Pardes.
"This dismissal should have taken place long ago since there never was from the beginning any indication that our client was intoxicated whether by alcohol or drugs," said William Sandback of the Mineola law firm of Sandback, Birnbaum and Michelen, DeMarco's attorney.
But Carolyn Lada, the Nassau County Assistant District Attorney who handled the case, said that because both the officers and the medical personnel who subsequently responded to the scene suspected that some sort of intoxicant was involved, the case took longer as DeMarco's blood sample was tested in three different labs.
"We [first] sent it out to FEB, the Forensic Evidence Bureau of the Nassau County Police Department," Lada said, "and it came back no alcohol.
"We then sent it out to National Medical Services in Pennsylvania, an accredited lab that tested the sample for drugs and it came back clean. Then there's another lab in Tennessee, Aegis, and they performed more comprehensive screening, including testing for steroids. We got those results back on Monday, June 11 and they came back clean also," she said.
Lada said prosecutors had a collision reconstructionist, Steve Coulon, look at the skid and yaw marks at the accident site, a southbound lane of Clinton Road, where DeMarco's 1986 Jaguar struck a tree. Coulon looked at the damage to the tree and also at photographs of the damage to the vehicle. Based on his assessment, said Lada, "I didn't believe there was enough evidence to determine the level of speed for us to prosecute criminally. Was he driving recklessly, weaving, speeding? Those were the questions we had."
Lada also said prosecutors interviewed one of the two girls who were in the car that night, and she didn't indicate that DeMarco was speeding or driving recklessly.
"It appeared very appropriate, after we conducted the exhaustive investigation because of the fatality," Lada said, "that we should dismiss the case because there was no criminal action that we could sustain. It just didn't look like there was any criminality at all."
Sandback, his attorney, said "This was a young man who has been put through an unbelievable amount of stress and was unable to perform his class work at the level that he was accustomed to. This was a very unfair situation."
"Once they checked him out," said Sandback, referring to the lengthy legal procedure, "it should have ended there. Instead they opted to conduct some exotic tests at out-of-state labs. The legal proceedings are over as far as this case is concerned."
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