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Teen gets jail time in fatal Pasco wreck

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By TODD LESKANIC | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 5, 2009

DADE CITY - The kid who painted the floor of his bedroom with New York Yankees pinstripes should have spent today glorying in his team's 27th World Series championship.

Instead, Matthew Laidley's mother, Maria, was at a courthouse talking about how elated he would have been with the Yankees championship and how he would have turned 20 years old this past Sunday.

All of this would have been if not for one foolish act by Adam Sanford, a fellow Wesley Chapel High senior and otherwise decent kid.

Laidley and another senior, Katelin Kaiser, were riding in Sanford's Isuzu Trooper on Aug. 29, 2007, when Sanford lost control of the vehicle as he was speeding and passing cars on the shoulder of Curley Road. The SUV flipped several times, killing Laidley and severely injuring Kaiser.

Sanford, 19, of Land O' Lakes, pleaded guilty today to vehicular homicide, manslaughter by culpable negligence and reckless driving with serious bodily injury in an emotional hearing that left three families in tears.

"The past two years of my life I have gone through so much," Kaiser said. "Even right now, I look like I'm fine and I'm not. I've been through hell and back. That day, part of me died and it's not coming back."

Pasco Circuit Judge Pat Siracusa sentenced Sanford to six months in the Pasco County Jail to be followed by 10 years of probation. Sanford is also to spend the weekend following the anniversary of the crash in jail during the decade he's on probation.

Siracusa ordered Sanford to speak to high school students about the dangers of reckless driving and to carry a photo of Laidley at all times.

"It is unimaginably difficult to sentence a good person who does something so disastrously reckless without any intent," Siracusa said. "I don't have any doubt in my mind that you didn't pass on the right side with the intent of hurting anybody, but you did. Somebody's dead, somebody's irreparably scarred and three families are wrecked."

State sentencing guidelines would normally have required the judge to send Sanford to prison for 10 years. Siracusa opted to go below the guidelines because of Sanford's remorse and because the incident represented an isolated incident in his life.

"I have a shrine in his memory in my bedroom so I can remember him every single day," Sanford said in a tearful apology. "I'll never forget him.

"Every movie I see on TV where it's two friends having a great time, I think of me and Matt. Watching the Yankees play, the first thing that goes through my mind is that Matt would be going crazy with how well they are playing."

Laidley was an excellent student who took mostly Advanced Placement classes as a senior at Wesley Chapel. He developed a love of math and physics and planned to go to college to become an aeronautical engineer.

He and Kaiser had been friends since elementary school.

Not only did Kaiser lose a great friend, but her injuries have left her health in question. She's now battling depression and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and also has a cyst on her spinal cord that could eventually take her ability to walk.

Kaiser has forged on and is enrolled in a pre-med program at the University of South Florida.

She hopes to become a physiatrist, a doctor of rehabilitation.

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (813) 731-8098.

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