Jury finds Beasley guilty of fatal race

By Jimmy LaRoue

Published: August 27, 2008

Brittany Engleman would have turned 19 today.
Instead, Cory Beasley, 23, was found guilty Wednesday of participating in a street race that caused Engleman’s death, will spend the next four years in jail – thinking daily, he said, about everything that happened Oct. 23. 
That was when, after losing control of his 2006 Chevy Cobalt Supersport on the gravelly surface of Va. 42 near Buffalo Gap High School around 4 a.m., Beasley’s car flipped several times before landing on its roof alongside the road. The force of the crash ejected and killed Engleman – a passenger in his car who was not wearing a seatbelt at the time.
The 10-woman, two-man jury deliberated for more than four hours over two days to reach its verdict. It decided, under Virginia code, that Beasley engaged in a race “in a manner so gross, wanton and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life” in causing Engleman’s death. 
As the sentence was read, family and friends of both Beasley and Engleman could be heard, and seen, crying.
“On both sides, they’re hurting, we’re hurting, everybody’s hurting,” said Engleman’s mother, Tammy Harris, following the verdict.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Robin Boylan, who sought an 18-year sentence for Beasley – one for each year of Engleman’s life, he said – believes the case will reverberate.
“My message is, don’t race on the roads of Augusta County, or we’ll come after you,” Boylan said.
Harris, called to testify prior to Beasley’s sentencing, had members of the jury crying as she spoke of lengthy, daily visits to her daughter’s burial site. Her two children, she said, are having a difficult time dealing with the loss of their sister. For Christmas, they visited her gravesite.
Engleman’s mother said her 12-year old daughter cries herself to sleep nightly and looks daily at pictures of her big sister, who loved butterflies and Care Bears, Harris said.
“She doesn’t want to go to school,” Harris said of her younger daughter. “She just wants her sister back.”
Beasley, given the chance to speak prior to sentencing, talked of his relationship with Engleman, hanging his head and with his voice quivering as he described how he’s changed since her death.
“I just don’t feel like I have much to live for – nothing to look forward to,” Beasley said. “Every time I close my eyes, I think about her. I think about the wreck.”
At one point, Beasley, given a chance to address Engleman’s family and friends directly, looked back at them, sitting a few feet away. 
“Sorry,” Beasley said. “I wish I could take her place.”
But as remorseful as he is now, Boylan said, what happened in the early morning hours of Oct. 23 wasn’t an accident – “It didn’t happen as a result of the stars coming together,” he said following the trial.
Boylan picked up the enlarged photo of Engleman in her softball uniform. She was, her mother said, larger than life – and full of promise, a gifted artist with plans to attend Blue Ridge Community College after she had recently graduated R.E. Lee High School in Staunton.
“Brittany’s is the voice that you can’t hear,” Boylan said. “But you did hear the voice of her mother … the love that she has for her lost daughter, the anguish that she has in her heart.”
Defense attorney Thomas McPherson asked the jury to consider Beasley’s intentions, noting that he would have to live with what happened forever.
“No matter what you come up with with regard to a number, there’s a certain kind of hell that Cory has put himself in,” McPherson said.
Harris said she would return to court for the Dec. 10 jury trial for Torrance Mack, who was also involved in the incident that led to Engleman’s death. Beasley, who had taken a mixture of alcohol and Vicodin prior to the wreck, said he was trying to accelerate past Mack just before losing control of his car.
Robert Gaylor Jr., 22, of Staunton, was found not guilty last week of aiding and abetting her death for his role in the act. Gaylor testified during the trial in Beasley’s defense.
Beasley, Mack and Gaylor, according to testimony, had been hanging out with friends late Oct. 22 and early the next morning. Bored, Beasley suggested going for a ride, and the three drove separate cars, taking turns passing one another.
Beasley and Gaylor denied that there was any race; however, Lindsay Cash, riding with Mack, testified to the contrary, and said Mack reached speeds of about 100 mph. Beasley’s car, according to the Virginia State Police, reached 5,760 rpm just five seconds before the wreck. 
McPherson declined comment following the trial; however, as he asked Judge Victor V. Ludwig for Beasley to be released on bond pending a pre-sentencing report, he said there likely would not be an appeal.
“I don’t know that there will be any more steps taken in this case following sentencing,” McPherson said.
Ludwig ordered the pre-sentencing report, but remanded Beasley to jail.
“The sentence was fair. … Everything was fair. It doesn’t bring her back. It doesn’t give us peace,” Harris said before walking away from the courthouse.
Minutes later, Beasley, his head looking downward in the rain, was led away in handcuffs by Augusta County Sheriff’s deputies to Middle River Regional Jail in Verona.