A Wisconsin man has been charged with crashing his car while driving drunk and then leaving his mother to die alone while he hid out in the house he shared with her.
Casey Yiannackopoulos was charged with reckless homicide and hit-and-run after the Sunday evening crash. He refused to take field sobriety tests, and results of a blood draw are pending, WISN reported.
Police and fire crews responded to the crash in the Milwaukee suburb of Muskego and found the 77-year-old woman, who has not been publicly identified, trapped in the vehicle and unconscious. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Witnesses told police they saw the driver of the vehicle stagger out and run away after reportedly telling witnesses he was going for help.
Instead, he ran back to his house, a block away, and hid in the crawl space for about four hours until police found him there. A criminal complaint says they used a taser and a police dog to get him out.
In court this week, Court Commisioner Daniel Rieck told Yiannackopoulos he found his behavior “depraved.”
“This went from driving while drunk, having what one would presume is a very unfortunate, traumatic accident, losing your mother, but then quite literally leaving her to die. Why? Because you didn’t want to get in trouble,” Rieck said.
According to the complaint, Yiannackopoulos told police that if he’d known his mother had died, he would have been “way more cooperative.”
Prosecutors asked for a $250,000 bail, but Rieck set it at triple that. He is due in court again on Thursday, Law&Crime said.
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[Featured image: Casey Yiannackopoulos/Muskego Police Department]
