Published August 31, 2005

NEWPORT — The attorney for a teenager charged with two counts of manslaughter in a Westmore crash a year ago wants the case to go to Juvenile Court.

Orleans District Court will consider the motion on September 19.  Charles Meyer was 14 at the time of the accident.

The state says Mr. Meyer, now 15, was driving a 1994 Toyota Celica at a high rate of speed on Route 5A on August 24, 2004.  Route 5A winds along the shoreline of Lake Willoughby on one side, with the ledges of Mount Pisgah on the other.  In the car with Mr. Meyer were Philip Leno, 17, of Orleans and Norman Woolard, 16, of Westmore.

Someone called police and reported the car racing around near the North Beach.  While police were on their way, a boater called the State Police and said the car had hit the ledge.

According to the State Police, Mr. Meyer lost control at the top of a knoll where the road bends to the left.  The car skidded into the ledge and flipped onto the roof.  Mr. Leno and Mr. Woolard were killed.  Mr. Meyer was only slightly injured.  The car was totaled.

Mr. Meyer lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with his mother and brother.  He pled innocent to the two felony charges in December and was released into the custody of his mother on a $2,500 appearance bond.  His conditions of release allow him to live in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Vermont.  The conditions were amended Tuesday to include the Stone Mountain School in North Carolina.  In his motion Richard Rubin, Mr. Meyer’s attorney, said it is a small residential school in an outdoor environment.  It specializes in boys aged 11 to 16 with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities.

In his motion to move the case to Juvenile Court, Mr. Rubin wrote that his client was an inexperienced driver who lost control of the car while driving about 70 miles per hour “on a fairly straight section of Route 5A.”

The motion says the defendant’s father died when he was ten years old.  At the time of the accident he had completed the eighth grade.  He has now completed the ninth grade.  He had no prior record of delinquency and had never appeared in any criminal or juvenile court.

“The procedures, services, and facilities available through juvenile proceedings are more than sufficient to meet rehabilitation and community protection needs presented in this case,” Mr. Rubin wrote.