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04/29/2006Teen is charged in crashSpeeding and alcohol suspected in fatal accidentTRAVERSE CITY — A Traverse City High School student allegedly drove without a license and with alcohol in his system when he smashed a carload of fellow teens into a commercial truck on South Airport Road. Three Traverse City teens died in the Thursday afternoon crash. The driver and one passenger survived. Prosecutors on Friday charged driver Justin Jason Nguyen, 17, with three felonies and four misdemeanors in deaths of Phougheune Siphengphet, 16, and Davy Koumliene, 16, both students at Traverse City Central High School, and Dath Keovongkoth, 17, a student at Traverse City High School. All three were pronounced dead at the scene after a 1995 Mazda 626 driven by Nguyen on South Airport Road near Tom's Food Market allegedly veered left through three lanes into an oncoming commercial truck owned by Ferguson Traverse Supply Company of Traverse City. Also injured was Bao Nguyen, 17, a female student at Traverse City High School, who was treated and released from Munson Medical Center Thursday night. Justin Nguyen, who remains hospitalized, is charged with three counts of causing death while operating a motor vehicle without a license, a 15-year felony, and three counts of negligent homicide, two-year misdemeanors. He also is charged with operating a vehicle as a minor with a blood-alcohol content higher than 0.02 but less than 0.08, a misdemeanor punishable by community service. Grand Traverse County sheriff's officials spent Friday holding back — at times, even backtracking — on crash information. Sheriff Scott Fewins first confirmed that both the driver of the vehicle and a female passenger sitting behind him survived. Fewins retracted his statement hours later, refusing to confirm whether Justin Nguyen was the driver. "If I said that this morning, I probably shouldn't have said that," he said. Justin Nguyen, is not a registered driver in Michigan, based on state records. Bao Nguyen identified Justin Nguyen as the driver in the criminal complaint. The Mazda is registered to Tuyet Thi Nguyen, 35, of Traverse City, state records show. Fewins said Bao Nguyen, Keovongkoth and Siphengphet did not wear seatbelts, but he refused to release specific crash details. "The prosecutor has asked we give him a complete investigation before we start to surmise (the cause)," he said. "He wants us to be very accurate. We still got 10 guys working on this right now, going in all different directions. They just asked that I not speculate." Hours later, Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Alan Schneider authorized the charges against Justin Nguyen. Witnesses said he allegedly was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic before he lost control of the vehicle, according to criminal records. Fewins confirmed that the Mazda veered across three lanes of traffic before it crashed into the oncoming Ferguson truck and that speed likely was a factor. "He had been out of control for some time before the accident happened," he said. "I can tell you for sure that speed was a factor, there is no doubt." Fewins said the driver of the truck, Curtis James Kramer, 30, of Interlochen, was wearing a seatbelt and was not injured. "We do not believe there will be any issues with (Kramer)," he said. Fewins said identification problems plagued sheriff's officials until Friday afternoon, nearly 21 hours after the crash, as they attempted to coordinate family members to make positive identifications of the dead teens. "The problem was that the boys were banged up so bad and had to be prepped so the families could see them," he said. "We also had troubles with one ID that was so poor you couldn't use that with any certainty. We went up and got new pictures from the school that were colored and tried to identify them through it." Today's Obituaries See related stories:
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