A young life lost in 'stupid' joyride crash

THE TWO Bensalem police officers knocked on the door at 4 a.m. yesterday, somber and solicitous, waking Bruce and Karen Fouracre from their sleep.

"The cops said: 'Please sit down,' " Karen Fouracre said, sobbing in the sunshine outside her Bensalem home a few hours later.

"They said: 'Is your son's name Danny?' " her husband said, his grief quieter but no less visible.

The next words were too agonizing to bear but too true to deny: A 14-year-old boy joyriding with friends in his mother's car at 2 a.m. had been speeding without headlights when he ran a red light and whipped illegally around a corner on Academy Road near Willits, in Northeast Philadelphia.

The youth, Winston Charleston, veered the Chrysler Sebring onto the wrong side of the road and hit two cars in a thunderous explosion of glass and smoke. Behind the wheel of her now-mangled red Volkswagen Jetta, Jess Feldman, of Lower Moreland, was seriously injured.

But her boyfriend riding with her, Dan Fouracre, 22, bore the brunt of the impact. The young man whom friends relied on for a good joke or a quick smile died in the wreckage.

"My hope is that he didn't even know it, that he didn't feel a thing," his mother cried as she clutched her husband.

A 22-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman emerged uninjured from a 2003 Chevrolet Impala that was also struck by Charleston's speeding car.

As dawn gave way to broad daylight, investigators kept the road closed and spent hours documenting a crash scene that they quickly realized was a crime scene.

The District Attorney's Office said that it would charge Charleston, who just celebrated his birthday Monday, with murder. Court records and a police spokeswoman reported he was 14, but investigators and prosecutors maintained he was 15.

Charleston, of State Road near Princeton Avenue, Tacony, also was charged with reckless driving, driving without a license and violating curfew. The teens were out joyriding nearly four hours past the city's curfew.

Charleston was taken to Aria Health's Torresdale Hospital, where he was treated for an unspecified complaint of pain. His three passengers, two 15-year-olds and a 14-year-old, also were hospitalized with a broken ankle, a broken wrist and a broken arm, respectively, police spokeswoman Officer Christine O'Brien said.

Feldman was scheduled for surgery for injuries that included a broken arm, dislocated shoulder and badly lacerated hand.

Tears streaming down his face, Bruce Fouracre remembered the younger of his two sons as an adventurous free spirit and hard-core Flyers fan who loved to skateboard, play video games and spend time with family and friends. He was a jokester, his mom said, remembering that he was named "Class Clown" in his middle-school yearbook.

"He never said 'no' to anything, ever," said Jim Goddard, 21, a lifelong friend who joined the family outside their home yesterday to mourn. "He was up to do anything. We once drove to Wildwood, stopped on the beach for 10 minutes, and then came home."

Bruce Fouracre had little time for anger yesterday.

"It's a no-win situation for anybody," he said. "His [Charleston's] parents are going to have to deal with it. He'll have to deal with it. And we'll have to deal with it."

But Karen Fouracre, a high-school secretary who got some much-needed comfort when her school's counselors visited her yesterday morning, railed against Charleston as she cried for her "Danny boy."

"I just want those children prosecuted for what they did, this stupid, stupid thing. Senseless," she said. "My child is gone because of something so stupid."