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Ken Mcgagh / AP
Tracy Keegan speaks during a service in for her daughter Marina Keegan, who died in a car crash in May.
The boyfriend of a woman who was killed in a car crash just days after her graduation in May from Yale was cleared of all charges Thursday in a Massachusetts courtroom, NBC station WHDH in Boston reported.
Marina Keegan and her boyfriend Michael Gocksch, both 22, had just graduated a few days earlier from Yale when they were on their way to see Keegan's parents in Cape Cod.
The car they were traveling in drifted into a guardrail after crossing two lanes, causing it to roll over.
Keegan died at the scene; Gocksch was taken to a hospital and released.
'My heart's broken': Yale grad Marina Keegan mourned after car crash
WHDH reported that Gocksch, who’s from New York, told investigators he had fallen asleep at the wheel.
"I’m very happy for that young man because he’s a fine, fine person," Gocksch’s attorney, Philip Tracy Jr., told the station.
Keegan’s death shook the Yale campus where she had served as president of the Yale College Democrats and was part of the Yale Occupy Movement.
An essay she wrote in a special edition of the Yale Daily News, titled "Opposite of Loneliness," was republished in the newspaper and went viral after her death. It was also distributed at the Class of 2012's commencement exercise.
Read Marina Keegan's essay "Opposite of Loneliness"
In it she tells her fellow students to "not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have."
The Boston Herald reported a magistrate ruled there was no probable cause to charge Gocksch with motor vehicle homicide by reckless operation, which state police had sought.
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State police said the couple were both wearing seatbelts and the driver wasn't speeding at the time of the accident.
Keegan's work had previously been published in The New York Times and she was slated to start a new job in June as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker.
The Herald reported Keegan's parents have supported Gocksch and stood by his side in court Thursday.
"He certainly wishes it was him and not her who suffered the fatality," Marina's mother, Tracy Keegan said.
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Leave a Comment:
a sad occurence, and two lives forever changed - one ended, the other upended. Sad. But you don't always have a victim and a perpetrator; sometimes just a victim and bad juu-juu.
Give it a little more time, but soon the finger-pointers, conspiracy theorists, and the rest of the tinfoil hat brigades will be here to explain everything to us all, from their delusional points of view. They amuse me greatly, and the fact that they all live sad, meaningless and frustrating lives is an added bonus. I'm sure Karma is keeping a close eye on them.
Wow..never read about a case done that fast, happen in May of this year and final already.
"State police said the couple were both wearing seatbelts and the driver wasn't speeding at the time of the accident"
Then why in God's name did they seek to have him charged?
It's a said and tragic case, but i wonder if the elite media would spend so much time on it if the deceased wasn't an Ivy leaguer who had been published in the NY Times.
Do you really think that MSNBC is somehow "elite?" Wow, you live in a strange world. However, I agree with your point about the relevance and importance of the story. This is not national news.
I have a lot of respest for the parents of the young woman who died, they did not allow their grief to cloud there judgement.