Prison for road death of rabbi
By Heather Yakin
Times Herald-Record
[email protected]
Monticello – The day should have been joyous. Rabbi Pesach Goldberg and his family were driving to a relative's bar mitzvah just before 9 a.m. on July 24. As they approached a rise in the road, they saw the drunken man in the middle of the pavement.
They saw him too late.
Goldberg swerved to avoid Joseph Olivieri but his car slid into the oncoming lane, colliding with a car driven by Jim Krueger. Goldberg, 47, of Brooklyn, was killed. His wife, Tova, was critically injured. Six of his nine children were hurt. Krueger, his wife, Jonnie, and one of their twin sons were also hurt.
Olivieri, 48, of Fallsburg, pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and first-degree reckless endangerment, felonies.
Yesterday, he was sentenced in Sullivan County Court to 1½ to 4½ years in prison, the maximum allowed.
"You deprived a community of a good man who was doing good works, who was doing God's work," said Judge Frank LaBuda. "How much good have you deprived this world of?"
Olivieri had caused trouble on that stretch of County Road 161 before, also while drunk. Six months before the crash that killed Goldberg, Olivieri – again in the road – had thrown a beer can through the windshield of a passing car. That time, he pleaded guilty to resisting arrest. Years ago, Olivieri was hit by a car. Now he has a steel rod replacing bone in the lower half of his left leg.
Assistant District Attorney Joey Drillings said Olivieri has been remorseful, but the prosecution believes prison is appropriate "Because of the senselessness of the incident that occurred," and because of the beer-can case. Olivieri has a history of alcohol-related offenses dating back to the 1980s.
Olivieri's lawyer, Stephan Schick, said his client was raised in an orphanage and has suffered social problems since then, including alcoholism.
"I'm just sorry," Olivieri said quietly. "I didn't anticipate the complications of the alcohol."
LaBuda said he wasn't unsympathetic to Olivieri's being an orphan, or to his physical injury – but that Olivieri's actions robbed children of their father, and caused serious injuries to other people.
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/10/29/olivier2.htm 
