Man Sentenced to Two Years for Airborne Metroparks Crash

A Fairview Park man was sentenced to two years in prison for fleeing from Lakewood Police and driving a 2004 Porsche over a cliff into the Metroparks below last year.   

Thomas C. Smith, 24, had faced more than 10 years in prison for the July 10 crash that left his 47-year-old passenger, Matthew Vaneck, in critical condition.  

Judge Stuart Friedman sentenced Smith to one year in prison for the aggravated vehicular assault charge, and another year for fleeing from police.     

Smith had also been found guilty of criminal damaging, failure to comply with a police officer and operating a vehicle while intoxicated.  

A Rocky River Municipal Court judge recently suspended Smith’s drivers license for the next 10 years.  

Police officials have said that Smith was driving at a high rate of speed when the 2004 Porsche Carrera came to the end of the Detroit Avenue extension and launched over a curb, landing more than 100 feet below in the Cleveland Metroparks.

The car belonged to Vaneck, who was ejected from the vehicle during the crash.  Police detectives interviewed Vaneck, but he “doesn’t really remember what happened,” Capt. Ed Hassing of the Lakewood Police Department told Lakewood Patch last year.

“He was pretty well banged up,” Hassing added.

Smith, who was briefly hospitalized, was scheduled to appear in Lakewood Municipal Court on a drunken driving charge, but the case was bound over to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court along with the vehicular assault charge.

"There were indications on the scene that he’d been drinking," Hassing said.

The crash took place in the early morning of July 10, after Smith from a traffic stop for expired plates.

When the car got a lead on police, the chased was called off. After the car launched from the parking lot at the Commodore Club Apartments, it sliced through trees on its way down, clearing Metro Parks Drive and landed in an embankment west of the street. “They’re both lucky they’re alive,” Hassing said.