Trial begins for ex-Marine accused of fatal car crash

James Farr and his friends walked out the back door of RC Dugans bar on Hempstead Turnpike Aug. 23, 2009, at almost the exact moment that brothers Thomas and Joseph Occhiogrosso walked out the front, prosecutors said.

The three men could not have known that within minutes, their lives would intersect in the most violent and tragic way possible, prosecutors said: Farr's BMW would slam into the brothers as they crossed Hempstead Turnpike in East Meadow, killing them both.

"This drunk driver made it less than half a mile before he plowed his car into two human beings," said prosecutor Brendan Ahern in his opening statement in Farr's trial on charges of drunken driving, second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide Wednesday. If convicted, Farr, 33, an ex-Marine who served three tours in Iraq, faces 5 to 15 years in prison.

Farr's defense lawyer, Greg Grizopoulos, of Rockville Centre, said it would have been impossible for his client to avoid the two men, who "came out of nowhere" onto the busy roadway.

"Sometimes a car accident is just a car accident," Grizopoulos said. "Just because two people died doesn't make what happened a crime."

Grizopoulos did not concede that his client was drunk, but he said if the jurors find that he was, they should convict him of just drunken driving. Prosecutors say Farr had three times the legal limit of alcohol in his system when he hit the men.

Ahern said although the men had all been drinking at the same bar, Farr made the irresponsible decision to drive, while the Occhiogrosso brothers, who he said had about twice the legal limit of alcohol in their system, made the better decision to walk.

"The two brothers paid for that decision with their lives," Ahern said.

Ahern said if Farr had been sober, he would have had enough time to avoid the men. The roadway, near Nassau University Medical Center, was well-lit and straight, he said, and Farr was traveling the speed limit.

When Farr hit the brothers, Joseph Occhiogrosso, 28, of East Meadow, was thrown onto the roof of Farr's car, while Thomas Occhiogrosso, 27, of Riverhead, was impaled in the windshield, lawyers in the case said.

Still, even with Thomas Occhiogrosso, a Navy veteran, literally bleeding in the passenger compartment of Farr's car, Farr did not stop for 282 feet, Ahern said.

Ahern said Farr ordered the four passengers in his car to leave before the police arrived.

"He was drunk, he just killed two people, and he knew it," Ahern said.