In June, Vincent Canzani, 61, was killed near Columbus, Ohio, when a driver veered onto the wrong side of Interstate 670 and caused a five-vehicle crash.
On Friday, a 22-year-old confessed on YouTube to being the man responsible for Canzani's death.
"My name is Matthew Cordle and on June 22, 2013, I hit and killed Vincent Canzani," he says into the camera. "This video will act as my confession."
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The video starts with Cordle's face and voice distorted as he describes "hopping from bar to bar," before he "made a mistake" and got in his truck "completely blacked out."
The picture and sound clear to dramatic music before he confesses and delivers his message:
I beg you, and I say the word beg specifically, I'm begging you, please don't drink and drive. Don't make the same excuses that I did. Don't say it's only a few miles or you've only had a few beers ...
I can't bring Mr. Canzani back, and I can't erase what I have done, but you can still be saved. Your victims still can be saved.
Ron O'Brien, the prosecutor for Franklin County, which includes Columbus, told The Columbus Dispatch that he saw the video and would ask a grand jury to indict Cordle on charges of aggravated vehicular homicide, which carries a sentence of two to eight years in prison.
"It's the most compelling video I think I have seen," O'Brien told the Dispatch. "He strikes me as remorseful and sincere."
Cordle was a suspect in the car crash but was never charged. The video was filmed by Alex Sheen of Cleveland and placed on his site Becauseisaidiwould.com, which calls itself a "social movement dedicated to bettering humanity through the power of a promise."
Sheen, in the words of BetaBeat's Jessica Roy, "will most likely encounter some blowback for using a manslaughter confession to market his budding nonprofit startup," which is why he was careful to note that Cordle reached out to him "against all legal advice" and "decided to make this video and release it prior to any charges being filed against him."
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