The man involved in a February crash that killed three members of a family headed to a play at Walt Whitman High School will plead guilty to three counts of vehicular manslaughter, according to his attorney.
According to a collision reconstruction report from Montgomery County police and obtained by The Washington Post, Ogulcan Atakoglu was driving his BMW at speeds as high as 115 mph on River Road on Feb. 27 before braking and hitting the Chevy Volt containing four members of the Buarque de Macedo family while traveling at about 75 mph.
Police records say Atakoglu, a Potomac resident, was sober, wasn’t racing and tried to avoid the crash, according to The Washington Post. His vehicle hit the Chevy Volt while its driver, 52-year-old Michael Buarque de Macedo, was trying to cross River Road to an access road that leads to Whitman’s parking lot. The family was on its way to an evening musical at the school.
Also killed in the crash were 53-year-old Alessandra M. Buarque de Macedo and her son, 18-year-old Thomas Michael Buarque de Macedo, who would’ve graduated from Whitman in June. Helena Buarque de Macedo, a Whitman sophomore who was also in the car, survived the accident and accepted her brother’s diploma at Whitman’s June 8 graduation ceremony.
David Felsen, Atakoglu’s attorney, said Wednesday his client is deeply sorry for the crash and plans to take responsibility. Felsen said he filed a plea agreement Wednesday on behalf of Atakoglu. He was charged late Tuesday, according to the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office.
“This has been a tremendously powerful and distressing time for everyone involved, including the Atakoglu family,” Felsen said. “On numerous occasions, the family has sat around the dining room table and cried, expressing their concern for the other family and understanding how serious and tragic this is.”
According to The Washington Post, Atakoglu faces a total of up to 30 years in prison, though nonmandatory state sentencing guidelines advise a penalty of three months to 12 years. A plea hearing is scheduled for Aug. 8 in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Rockville, according to the state’s courts database.
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Since the crash, Whitman Principal Alan Goodwin, members of the school community and residents in the Bannockburn neighborhood have restarted an effort to get the State Highway Administration (SHA) to build a traffic light at the intersection of River Road and the access road to the school’s parking lot.
It’s heavily used in the morning and afternoon when students and parents are accessing and leaving the school’s parking lot. The SHA has pointed to previous traffic studies that show other than those two times, the intersection is lightly used and doesn’t warrant its own traffic light.
Michael Buarque de Macedo was driving the Chevy Volt across the westbound lanes of River Road to get to the parking lot when Atakoglu’s vehicle smashed into the car, sending it off the roadway. According to police records obtained by The Washington Post, witnesses said Atakoglu could be heard yelling “I did it! It’s all my fault.”
Atakoglu was convicted in 2013 with negligent driving for speeding on I-270 and paid $639 in fines. He was charged with negligent driving in September 2015 in Rockville but the charges were dropped.
“He is accepting responsibility,” Felsen said. “He is not the sole cause of this collision, but he is a cause of the collision and that would be sufficient under the statute. This is a horrible tragedy on so many levels.”
