Anton J.S. Keating - Patricia Koppleman

Wife acquitted of auto manslaughter

by Jane Thompson

A Glen Burnie woman accused of causing her husband's death by running him down with her car and then waiting two days to seek medical help was acquitted yesterday of automobile manslaughter.

Instead, the seven-woman, five-man jury convicted Patricia Koppleman of reckless and negligent driving after three hours of deliberations.

Judge Eugene M. Lerner gave Mrs. Koppleman the maximum penalty - a $500 fine - immediately after the jury verdict and told the 31-year-old office worker that he would have sent her to jail if he could have.

Mrs. Koppleman did not react immediately to the verdict, but left the courtroom in tears, surrounded by family and friends.

"I'm just pleased that they found out the real story," she said. "I loved my husband then and I love him now."

Jury Foreman Roger Allen of Annapolis said the jury acquitted Mrs. Koppleman of manslaughter because it was not convinced Mark Koppleman received his fatal head injury as a result of his wife's driving.

"There was a possibility that it happened that way, but there are other possibilities," he said. "We couldn't be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it happened that way."
Koppleman, 29, an unemployed sheet metal worker from Glen Burnie, died Oct. 29 of a fractured skull and swelling and hemorrhaging of his brain.

Mrs. Koppleman was indicted on a murder charge after he died, but prosecutors dropped it moments before the trial began Tuesday.

Assistant State's Attorney William C. Mulford II contended that Koppleman sustained the injury four days earlier, when Mrs. Koppleman struck her husband with her car, rode for at least a half mile with him on the hood, and then stopped, causing Koppleman to fall off and hit his head.
Koppleman and his wife had argued earlier that night when Koppleman refused to go home with her, according to testimony from Mrs. Koppleman and her father-in-law, who witnessed the incident.

Mrs. Koppleman said she went to a Linthicum bar that night to get her husband. She said she wanted him to come home so he could look for a job the next day.
He refused to leave with her and went home with his father, Jerome Koppleman. Mrs. Koppleman then went to his father's home to get him.

When he still refused to leave with her, she drove her Chevrolet Chevette into his Ford pick-up truck and began to drive around in circles in a cul-de-sac nearby.

Koppleman ran out after her. While Mrs. Koppleman said he jumped out in front of her, the elder Koppleman said she drove straight at him, hit him, and continued to drive with him on the hood.

She said she came to a gradual stop and her husband slipped off.

She did not seek medical help for his head injury, which was not visible externally, until two days later because she did not realize how serious it was, she said.

Mulford argued that Koppleman's injuries, which included scrapes on both elbows and other parts of his body, proved that he fell face up on the pavement and hit his head when he fell off the car.

But defense attorney Anton Keating argued that there was no evidence that Koppleman injured his head then and that Mulford only was speculating that it happened that way.

Reprinted from