New York – Teenage Boy (Lars Haas) Given Alcohol by Mother, Kills Truck Driver (Robert Meehan) in Car Accident
By Steven Smith, Attorney and David Wolf, Attorney
Published by Child Injury Lawyer Network
Seventeen year old Lars Haas had allegedly been drinking and smoking marijuana when he ran a red light and plowed into a truck. The driver of the truck, seventy one year old Robert Meehan, was ejected from the truck and died from his injuries. The boy was driving his mother's, Susan Haas’s, car at the time of the accident, but that is not all that his mother allegedly gave him: she has been charged with providing alcohol to Haas and some of his friend’s before loaning the boy her car. Ms. Haas was not in the car when the accident occurred. Police have reported that Haas’s blood alcohol level was over the legal limit for the state of New York, and that he had marijuana in his system as well. He has been charged with aggravated vehicular homicide and driving while intoxicated (DWI) among other charges. Ms. Haas has been charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor.
The legal drinking age is twenty-one for a good reason. Teenagers are strongly affected by alcohol, and their already poor judgment is made even worse when they are under the influence. But children are not the only ones whose judgment is impaired by alcohol; that the child’s mother was supplying her son with alcohol is reprehensible, that she then loaned him her car when he was intoxicated is inexcusable. Their combined poor judgment has cost a man his life. The full story is available at Teen, mom arrested in fatal New York DWI accident .
