The daughter of a man allegedly killed by a drunk driver in June says the suspect’s filmed "confession" video, which went viral after it was posted online early this week, is an attempt to mitigate punishment and sends “the wrong message to everyone.”
Angela Canzani, the daughter of Vincent Canzani who was killed June 22, allegedly when Matthew Cordle, 22, drove while intoxicated and ran into his Jeep, said that “there (is) no question of fault” and that Cordle is “misleading in the video.”
“There was a traffic cam. There was a third car involved,” she said. “So people are kind of looking at this like he’s just coming out of nowhere. It’s making it look like he’s confessing to a crime. … Like he’s some hero or something.”
Cordle's 3 1/2 minute video, which was set to somber music and posted Tuesday, begins with a pixelated image of his face as he states with a disguised voice, “I killed a man.”
Cordle continues by describing the events leading up to the death of 61-year-old Canzani, a veteran of the Navy.
"This video will act as my confession,” he says in the video.
But Angela Canzani, of Columbus, Ohio, said that for almost three months Cordle “would not cooperate with police or with the insurance company.”
She said she wasn’t aware of Cordle’s video, which he filmed Aug. 27 with the social awareness organization Because I Said I Would, until she saw it on the news.
Canzani said that Cordle should have provided the video to detectives and herself first before posting it on the Internet.
“There’s a way to go about it,” she said. “And that wasn’t it.
“If he wanted to raise awareness, I mean, I would’ve commended him for that down the road, but the video is totally misleading. The motives, I believe, are so he’ll get a lighter sentence.”
Franklin County prosecutor Ron O'Brien on Thursday told the Associated Press that Cordle was a suspect in the deadly crash but hadn't been charged.
O'Brien said he saw the video on Wednesday and downloaded a copy onto a CD as evidence. He said he'll ask a grand jury to indict Cordle for aggravated vehicular homicide with an alcohol specification, a charge that carries a maximum of eight years in prison upon conviction, reports the AP.
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'I killed a man': 22-year-old claims in video he caused drunken-driving fatality
Vincent Canzani's former employer, Steve Cain, manager of The Tinder Box in Easton, Ohio, who remembered his employee as a "very good listener" and a "genuine individual," said Cordle's video "was the right thing to do."
“There was a lot of speculation of what was going to happen,” he said. “It was good to see and how he ended the video – begging everyone not to drink and drive."
Cain added, though, that Cordle's video "shouldn’t affect any of the sentencing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.