A Gorham woman pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter Monday and will spend at least four years in prison for being the driver in a crash that killed her teenage son and her boyfriend last fall.
In a tearful statement in Cumberland County Unified Court, Candice Tucker said her decision to get behind the wheel on Oct. 19, 2014, after consuming alcohol and prescription drugs is “a tragedy I cannot take back.”
“Not all my decisions that day were good,” said Tucker, who wore a red jail uniform, her feet shackled. “I can only ask for forgiveness.”
Tucker’s boyfriend, Eric S. Morey, 35, and her son, Branden Denis, 16, died in the accident.
Tucker accepted a plea deal in which she was sentenced to 12 years, with all but four years suspended. After her release, Tucker is to serve four years of probation. Violating probation would send her back to prison for the remaining eight years.
Mary Plummer, the mother of Morey’s children, asked the court to sentence Tucker to the full 12 years.
“Candice will get out, and because she is broken, she will get behind the wheel again. She will drink again,” Plummer said in an impassioned statement to Justice Nancy Mills. “She is broken, and I do not believe that she will change.”
Kevin Denis, Branden Denis’ grandfather, also spoke at the hearing. He said his grandson, a Gorham High junior who lived at his grandfather’s house in Steep Falls, had been working hard toward his goal of playing football for the University of Maine.
Denis said his grandson excelled at whatever he did, and that since his death, all of the families affected by the crash have been struggling to cope with their pain.
“He’s from a broken family, as I was,” Denis said. “I decided early on that my grandkids weren’t going to have the life I had. The family’s having a rough time.”
Tucker has two other children who live with the Denis family. Kevin Denis said Tucker’s youngest cries herself to sleep, missing her mother.
Immediately after the accident, Tucker’s sister, Angelique Tucker, said her sister had been distracted by her son in the back seat when her Honda crossed the center line on Route 302, swerved back into her lane and then left the road.
But Assistant District Attorney Michael Madigan said Candice Tucker was intoxicated and driving erratically. Investigators found many empty and full beer cans at the scene, in addition to numerous empty single-serving “nip” bottles of whiskey. Tucker told investigators she had a beer and a shot of whiskey before getting into the car with Morey and her son.
Blood tests taken two hours after the crash showed that her blood-alcohol level was 0.07 percent, less than the legal limit of 0.08 percent to drive, but authorities also found anti-depressants and Valium in her system, according to prosecutors.
Tucker, Morey and Denis had been visiting friends and relatives in Bridgton for much of the day of the crash, and spent the latter part of that Sunday around a bonfire, friends said.
According to Tucker’s attorney, Amanda Doherty, Tucker had been suffering from anxiety and other mental illnesses that intensified after she had brain surgery. She also had struggled with substance abuse for years. She lost her health insurance a short time before the accident and was in the process of seeking psychiatric treatment, Doherty said.
After the crash, Tucker, then 35, spent six weeks out of work because of injuries and other complications. She checked herself into Spring Harbor, a residential mental health facility, then enrolled in aggressive outpatient therapy, her lawyer said.
Tucker has been in jail since being arrested in early December.
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