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The lawsuit filed by Dominique’s mother, Deborah Dalessio, in April 2022 said Smith’s negligence and carelessness caused the fatal accident. The complaint said he was speeding, under the influence of alcohol or drugs or both and inattentive. Dominique\u00a0Dalessio planned to become a civil rights attorney, her family said at Smith’s sentencing, but her capacity to earn wages, according to the lawsuit, was destroyed in the crash.<\/p>\n
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The verdict form in the civil case shows that while the jury found Smith’s reckless conduct caused\u00a0Dalessio’s death, the panel checked “No” on\u00a0questions of whether he was travelling unreasonably fast and operating under the influence.\u00a0The jury also checked the box saying the plaintiff was entitled to double or triple damages.<\/p>\n
An attorney for Smith could not be reached immediately Sunday. His attorney in the criminal case, Jerry Attanasio, urged the judge not to send his client to prison, describing Smith as a hardworking man of character whose conduct fell short of criminal recklessness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Mr. Smith swerved his motor vehicle to avoid hitting someone or something and ended up hitting another vehicle,” Attanasio said. “He made an evasive maneuver to avoid one object and resulted in him hitting another. The level of criminal negligence here is minimal.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith also apologized in court to the Dalessio family<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis was the greatest mistake of my life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Since her daughter’s death, Deborah Dalessio said at Smith’s sentencing, the family dealt with the pain by keeping Dominique’s memory alive with memorial gardens, scholarships and donations to animal shelters. She described her daughter as “vivacious” and a deeply caring and faithful person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dominique\u00a0Dalessio attended Central Connecticut State University and Naugatuck Valley Community College. At the time of the crash, she had just landed summer internships at local law firms and had been accepted into an online Harvard University course, Deborah Dalessio said at Smith’s sentencing.<\/p>\n
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Includes previous reporting by Bruno Matarazzo Jr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dominique Dalessio, 20, of Bethlehem, died after a head-on car crash in Waterbury in April 2020. Her family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,25804,31614,73911,31613,30294],"class_list":{"0":"post-163848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-bethlehem","9":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","10":"tag-bethlehem-news","11":"tag-ct-insider","12":"tag-litchfield-county-times","13":"tag-northwesthills","14":"tag-register-citizen","15":"tag-republican-american"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}