Delaware State Police arrested a 28-year-old man on probation for a 2004 fatal drunken driving accident and charged him yesterday with vehicular homicide in the death of a Maryland teen last weekend.
Andrew R. Rankin was taken into custody immediately after he was released from the hospital yesterday afternoon. He was sent to the Delaware Corrections Center in Smyrna, with bail set at $11,000. As a condition of bail, he has been ordered not to drive.
In addition to vehicular homicide, Rankin, a New Castle, Del., resident, was charged with two counts of vehicular assault and driving under the influence in the crash near Dover, Del., that claimed the life of 17-year-old Brian A. Wilson of Havre de Grace.
Rankin also may be required to serve the remaining two years of a sentence for vehicular homicide and DUI in the death of 20-year-old Cynthia M. Boone.
"He was on probation for the previous offense and has violated probation," said Sgt. Joshua A. Bushweller, a Delaware police spokesman. "He could immediately go back to jail for the violation itself."
Police issued warrants Sunday charging Rankin with the death of Wilson, who was on his way home from a week in Ocean City.
Wilson was riding in the passenger seat of a 1997 Mazda sedan driven by 18-year-old Nathan Flanery, a classmate at Havre de Grace High School. Flanery slowed to avoid a hood that had fallen off a station wagon ahead of them on Route 1 near Dover, authorities said. Rankin, driving a Mercedes sedan with a valid license, failed to reduce speed and rear-ended the Mazda, police said.
Wilson, a scholar-athlete who had won a scholarship to Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, died at Christiana Trauma Center in Newark, Del., early Sunday.
"This is a devastating incident that has us calling again for alcohol ignition interlocks until offenders prove they can drive sober," said Misty Moyse, national spokeswoman for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. "These devices are 90 percent effective in reducing repeat offenses and they usually have rehabilitative effects so that we don't have a revolving door of drunk drivers."
The driver has to blow into the device to start the car and retest every 30 minutes.
"Hopefully, this tragedy will bring to light the need for interlocks," said Caroline Cash, MADD director in Maryland and Delaware. "We are trying to make it part of every sentence for drunk driving in Maryland."
