Scott Coates - 2 December 2018 - waiting for Ohio ME results

[Sh79leach]

Scott M Coates
12/02/2018
40 years
White Male
in a vehicle, in the driveway of his home, at 19410 Harsax Avenue
Cleveland
Cleveland Police Department

https://www.facebook.com/scottcoates78

[Sh79leach]

His daughter was killed in a horrific car accident in 2016.

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index...f_aggrava.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A jury on Wednesday found a man guilty of aggravated murder for purposefully crashing his truck into another car at nearly 100 mph during a 2016 suicide attempt that killed the other driver.

Mark Rafter, a 50-year-old Brooklyn resident with history of mental illness, now faces a life sentence after jurors found that he drove a pickup truck the wrong way on Interstate 480 at full-throttle and smashed into the compact sedan driven by 20-year-old Kayla Coates.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Dick Ambrose is set to sentence Rafter Thursday.

Jurors found Rafter guilty of aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault and aggravated vehicular homicide. They reached their verdict after less than four hours of deliberations Wednesday.

"He wanted to end his life, and he didn't care who got in the way," Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Shannon Musson said during closing arguments Wednesday.

Lawyers for Rafter, who uses a wheelchair and oxygen tank and sometimes wears sunglasses due to injuries he suffered in the crash, admitted that Rafter's actions were reprehensible, but argued that he did set out to kill only himself by ramming into the highway's center berm.

Norton asked jurors to convict Rafter of a lesser charge, like vehicular homicide, which would not have carried a potential life sentence.

Coates was driving from her home to her job at McDonalds about 4:30 a.m. on Valentines Day in 2016. She wrote a Facebook post 20 minutes before the crash that it was her "last day opening" the restaurant.

"Last day opening and I'm completely okay with this," she wrote.

Rafter was previously diagnosed as bipolar and manic depressive and did not strictly adhere to his medicinal regimen, and started threatening suicide to his ex-wife and his son in the weeks leading up to the crash.

Rafter got onto the highway at the Tiedeman Road exit in his son's 2005 Ford F-150, and called his son to say goodbye, Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Blaise Thomas said during opening statements.

Data pulled from the truck showed that he drove it at full-throttle for 25 seconds, reaching speeds of nearly 100 mph.

Investigators believe that Coates saw the headlights of Rafter's vehicle barreling toward her and jerked the wheel in a last-ditch effort to avoid the crash. She dodged a full head-on collision, but the two vehicles collided with the combined force of a car going 150 mph striking a wall, Thomas said.

"The 5,000-pound Ford pickup truck went through the 2,500-pound Ford Fiesta like a hot knife through butter, and it did the same to Kayla," Thomas said. "Her body was basically split in half."

Coates, a Baldwin Wallace University student, died instantly. Rafter was hospitalized for several months.

[Sh79leach]

Those that knew him are already blaming drugs.

Danielle Spahn
Yesterday at 3:03 PM

Over the years can u count how many loved ones u have lost 2 dope?? I mean not just acquaintance...... People that really matter n ur everyday life. This is the 2nd this year..... I just cant wrap my head around it. R.I.P Scott Coates 13yrs of u n ur just gone.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto...00029655765351

[Olivia]

Acute intoxication by the combined effects of fentanyl, oxycodone, and tramadol. ACCIDENTAL.
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