PATERSON, N.J. (AP) - A man charged in a triple-fatal crash at a New Jersey gas station last year is going to trial after formally rejecting a plea deal with prosecutors calling for a 30-year prison sentence, which his attorney calls “outrageously high.”
Thirty-year-old Jason Van De Ree of Glenwood is charged with aggravated manslaughter, vehicular homicide and death by auto while intoxicated in the February 2019 crash at a Route 23 gas station in Wayne. Jon Warbeck, 50, and his 17-year-old son Luke were killed along with 22-year-old gas station attendant Lovedeep Fatra. Authorities said nine bags of heroin and a needle were found in Van De Ree’s car.
NorthJersey.com reports that Van De Ree made a brief court appearance Friday in Passaic County and chose to go to trial in the case. Defense attorney John Latoracca called the state’s offer “ridiculous” after the hearing and added, “If you want to send him to jail for 30 years, then convict him.”
Last month, the judge said he would allow a defense strategy known as involuntary intoxication, arguing that the defendant was unaware that the heroin the state maintains he took before getting behind the wheel was also spiked with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin.
The judge earlier ruled that prosecutors won’t be allowed to use the defendant’s statements to investigators because he wasn’t in any condition to voluntarily waive his rights when questioned. Police argued that the defendant was coherent when he was read his rights in a hospital bed hours after the crash, but the judge cited testimony that he “appeared to slip in and out of consciousness” as his Miranda rights were read to him.
The judge ruled, however, that prosecutors will be allowed to cite Van De Ree’s prior conviction of driving under the influence of heroin. He ruled they can also use his alleged statements to paramedics and the doctor who treated him at the hospital.
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