Ryan McCue was a talented musician who was headed home after visiting a girlfriend he talked about marrying one day.

Michael Knecht was a Jupiter teen high on Xanax and alcohol, driving the wrong way down Interstate 95 in a Ford Ranger.

They crashed just north of the St. Lucie West exit on Dec. 17, 2006, when Knecht slammed into McCue’s Hyundai Elantra, killing him at the scene.

Knecht, now 20, was sentenced today to more than 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to DUI manslaughter in a St. Lucie County courthouse. He will then serve four years probation, and his driver license will be suspended for life.

McCue’s father, David McCue, asked St. Lucie County Circuit Judge Robert Belanger to impose the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

“Ryan was doing all the right things and this kid was doing all the wrong things,” McCue said before the court hearing. “They met on that night. And this kid survived but Ryan didn’t.”

Knecht, who was 17 at the time of the crash, apologized to McCue’s family through sobs at the hearing.

“I want to tell you how horribly I feel that you lost your son because of me,” Knecht said. He said he will never mark another holiday without thinking about the McCues, and the fact that they are without Ryan.

“I am the one who took him from you,” he said.

When he died at age 31, McCue was beginning to see success with his band, Forever Dawn. They had been invited to play at a festival in Germany and had shows in Gainesville and Orlando.

McCue left the home of his girlfriend, Lauren Nodal, in West Palm Beach and was headed home to Winter Park in the early hours of Dec. 17.

Witnesses told traffic homicide investigators that Knecht’s Ford Ranger was “all over the road.” Three different people called law enforcement to report that he was going the wrong way as far as 16 miles away from the crash.

Investigators found a bag of marijuana and paraphernalia in Knecht’s car. Tests showed he was drunk and on Xanax, which he did not have a prescription to take.

A year after the crash, while he was out on probation, Knecht stole fishing equipment from a neighbor in Jupiter. He was charged with a third-degree felony, but went to pre-trial intervention.

Knecht’s attorney, Richard Lubin, said Knecht came from a dysfunctional family. His mother, who is bipolar, was hospitalized for more than two months at a stretch when he was a child. A psychologist for the defense testified that Michael’s father, a Palm Beach County personal injury attorney by the same name, beat him by slamming his head into desks and tables when he was growing up.

Lubin said Michael Knecht’s parents began taking him to doctors when he was 10 for behavioral problems. A month before the accident, he was prescribed antidepressants.

The attorney asked Belanger to go below the minimum sentence of just over 10 years in prison, based on testimony from two psychologists that Knecht’s previously undiagnosed bipolar disorder made him reckless and impulsive.

Belanger rejected that argument, saying that those problems describe “100 percent of my felony docket. There is no one in felony court who doesn’t exhibit poor judgment and poor impulse control.” Knecht “threatened the life of every single motorist driving on Interstate 95,” he said.

David McCue, who works for the city of Melbourne, said after the sentencing that he hasn’t yet forgiven Knecht, but appreciated the opportunity to address him in court.

“That was important to me,” he said.
-Kathleen Chapman

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