OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — A 17-year-old faces two felonies, one count of DUI involuntary manslaughter and one count of DUI aggravated battery. The charges come six weeks after Kevin Moroney and his girlfriend, Maureen Hogg, were both hit by a car in front of Moroney’s home near 84th and Tomahawk in Overland Park.
The suspect is 17 and hasn’t been charged as an adult, yet, so FOX 4 has chosen not to name him. But a witness and neighbor of Moroney’s described the teen’s mannerisms as anything but juvenile.
It was just before midnight on August 7, one night after strong storms moved through the metro. Lee Cross was doing the dishes and heard a noise, but he looked out back and didn’t see anything. Then he checked with his wife and realized the noise wasn’t the weather.
“It occurs to me I heard something, my four-year-old was woken up, so I grabbed a baseball bat and I go outside,” Cross recalled.
Cross wasn’t quite prepared for what he was about to see.
“There’s one car in my tree in my front yard, and as I go out I see a guy in my driveway, we now know to be Kevin Moroney,” explained Cross.
Moroney was walking Maureen Hogg to her car when the couple was hit. Police and court records point to the 17-year-old suspect behind the wheel of the car. Cross remembers that everyone rushed to check on him.
“He gets out of the car and he starts shouting, ‘somebody hit my car,’ repeatedly. He was saying that to his mother,” Cross said.
For a moment, Cross turned his attention to his neighbor.
“People attempted CPR on Kevin Moroney, who was laying edge of my driveway, two inches from my driveway and he was not able to be resuscitated,” Cross said.
Then he turned back to the teen driver.
“I just focused on the defendant, he was tearing at his license plate,” Cross said.
Cross thought it was weird, but didn’t want to speculate on the reason. He was confident the teen was impaired. The charges from the Johnson County District Attorney support what he saw.
“I was there, I saw him, I smelled the alcohol on him. I was able to observe his person, his mannerisms, his control, lack of control with his eyes, uncontrollable sobbing when he realized what he had done, crying in his mothers arms,” Cross recalled.
No one answered the door at the suspect’s Overland Park home on Tuesday. He’s due in court October 16th. Court records make no mention of when a hearing on whether to try him as an adult will take place, if he’s under house arrest, or has any restrictions. The victims’ family’s didn’t comment Tuesday under the advice of their attorneys.
