WARREN - Prosecutors may ask a judge to add two more years when he sentences a man for killing three Marine recruits in an impaired driving case because he lied about his past in hopes of gaining a lighter sentence.
Assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor Michael A. Burnett in a filing Thursday said investigators found that Donald P. Williams Jr. provided false information in a court filing written by attorney J. Gerald Ingram about his mother's criminal history and his father's military and psychological history.
Williams also provided the same information to Trumbull County Probation Officers preparing his presentence report, Burnett said.
The purpose of Ingram's filing was to provide possible mitigating factors for Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Andrew D. Logan to consider before he sentences Williams on Wednesday.
Burnett asked for a status conference Monday so Williamson's mother could address the issues.
Ingram did not return a late message seeking comment.
Williams is facing up to 31 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, three counts of aggravated vehicular assault, three other counts of vehicular assault and possessing drugs. He remains free on bond.
Burnett had asked for an 18-year prison sentence and a lifetime driver's license suspension but will likely ask for two more years in prison. Ingram asked for six and a half years in prison.
The chain-reaction crash March 31, 2010, killed Michael T. Theodore Jr., 19, of Howland; Joshua A. Sherbourne, 21, of Southington; and Zachary Nolen, 19, of Newton Falls.
The three, along with another recruit and a recruiter, were headed to Cleveland to finalize their enlistment papers when they were rear-ended by the semi driven by Williams at the intersection of state Route 5 and Burnett Road in Leavittsburg.
Williams was found to have diazepam and nordiazepam in his system. He had previously been convicted of drug trafficking in Mahoning County.
Ingram's filing said Williams suffered a traumatizing childhood that included a mother who was addicted to drugs and who went to prison for robbery when he was young.
His father, according to Ingram, served in the Air Force during the war in Vietnam and was shot down. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and was unable to care for his son.
Ingram's filing also said Williams grew up in foster care and was raised in a military-based facility until he was 18.
But Burnett's filing said prosecutor's investigators - tipped by WYTV 33 News reporter Peggy Sinkovich - found several of those allegations false.
Investigators found that Williams' mother never was arrested for or convicted of robbery. Investigators are also trying substantiate other claims refuted by his mother, including that his father's plane was shot down while serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War. The filing said the mother claims his father was stationed in Florida during the war, was never a pilot and was never deployed overseas.
She also said that his allegations of abuse while in the custody of the Mahoning County Children Service's or foster care are false. The woman said he was an unruly child so she sent him to military school.
"It is the position of the Trumbull County Prosecutor's Office that a false presentation of facts concerning his family background to presumably gain some sympathy in sentencing is a serious, if not criminal matter," Burnett wrote.