Charles Trainor is seen being led into Staten Island Criminal Court today. (Steve White)
The Staten Island driver who plowed his car into the side of a house on Friday told a criminal court judge today that he was neither drunk nor high on prescription medication when he lost control of his car.
Wearing baggy jeans and a ripped, white v-neck t-shirt, Charles Trainor, 22, pleaded not guilty to four charges, including vehicular assault and one count of DWI in a horrific accident that nearly killed a sleeping mom and her young child.
“I’m assuming he had a seizure at the time because of the events,” said Yan Katsnelson, Trainor’s attorney. “He was not under any influence of drugs or alcohol.”
Police at the scene found that Trainor blew a .024 on a Breathalyzer — below the legal the limit, but he failed a sobriety test at the scene, a source told The Post. Trainor told cops that he was on Keppra seizure medication at the time of the accident, the source added.
Trainor crashed into the box-shaped Arthur Kill Road home on Friday just after 4 am., where Lisa Roman and her five-year-old daughter Leonora were sleeping on a pullout couch in the kitchen. The two were pulled from under Trainor’s 2010 Hyundai Elantra and rushed to Staten Island University North Hospital.
Trainor suffered third degree burns on her upper body and her daughter sustained a fractured skull and eye-sockets, according to assistant district attorney Kirsten Kruger.
Seventeen-year-old Josette Roman, who was at the courthouse for Trainor’s arraignment this morning, said that her mother and younger sister were recovering.
“We ask everyone to keep praying,” she said.
Trainor was released on bail and left the Stapleton Criminal Court house just before noon today. He ran out the courthouse with his head down and swaddled by a grey, hooded sweatshirt, ignoring questions from reporters about the incident and refusing to say whether he had a history of seizures.
He jumped into a white Ford Focus with Pennsylvania plates and sped off, but not before the driver yelled at the press, “Get the hell out of here.”
The Roman house had suffered another vehicle crash a decade earlier when Philip Cutler, 20, plowed his car into the home, then occupied by an ailing grandmother.