POTTSTOWN (Pennsylvania) MERCURY

October 7, 2009

Mushroom farmer gets prison for killing worker

By Michael P. Rellahan, Journal Register News Service

WEST CHESTER — A member of the Guizzetti mushroom farming family was sentenced to prison Tuesday for a fatal accident at the company's New Garden farm that claimed the life of a "hard-working" father.

Leobardo Castillo was crushed when a front-end loader driven by Anthony Davis Guizzetti ran over him while he was unstacking hay at the farm. As other workers shouted at Guizzetti to stop the loader, Guizzetti put the machine in reverse and backed over Castillo's prone body again.

Castillo, 55, was pronounced dead at Christiana Hospital after the accident.

Guizzetti had a history of involvement with drugs before the accident and had quit the Chester County Drug Court program a few days after the accident occurred. He was found to have marijuana, cocaine and Xanax in his system at the time of the incident.

Because of difficulties with the case, he was able to plead guilty to charges of recklessly endangering another person and will serve six to 23 months in Chester County Prison.

"It was a compromise," said Assistant District Attorney Andrea Cardamone of the plea agreement between her office and Guizzetti's attorney, Curt Norcini of West Chester. "There is a difficult question as to whether (Guizzetti's) impairment caused (Castillo's) death, or whether it was a tragic accident.

"But we recognized that it was a difficult case, and we felt it was important that he is doing jail time."

Cardamone said the sentence, for its relative brevity, is still in the upper range of sentencing guidelines for the crime.

Members of Castillo's family were in court for the sentencing, but did not speak. Cardamone read a statement prepared by Castillo's daughter in which she called the sentence unfair.

"I and my mother both feel that the punishment of prison time for Anthony is unjust," wrote Leticia Castillo Ruiz in a letter to Judge David Bortner, who accepted the plea agreement. "I feel that if the (Guizzetti) family, owners of where my father worked, and Anthony had been more responsible with Anthony's addiction ... my father would never have been killed."

According to court records, Guizzetti, 21, of Newark Road, Landenberg, had been arrested in August 2008 by New Garden police and charged with possession of a controlled substance. Police said they found marijuana and Xanax in his car when it was pulled over for a traffic violation.

Four months later, in December, Guizzetti was pulled over again by township police and charged with driving under the influence. He enrolled in the drug court program as a way of treating his addiction and earning withdrawal of the charge against him. But he was found to have used drugs while under the program's supervision in December and February, and he spent four days in county prison as a result.

In April, a few days after Castillo's death, Guizzetti voluntarily withdrew from the program.

According to New Garden police, the accident occurred about 2 p.m. March 28 at the Guizzetti's mushroom farm on Penn Green Road. The company is a third-generation family mushroom operation established in 1963 by Gildo Guizzetti.

Workers told officer Joseph Greenwalt that Guizzetti was driving the front-end loader while Castillo was working with bales of hay. Guizzetti drove the equipment on top of Castillo, who was unable to get out of the way before hay stacked in the loader knocked him down.

Although workers yelled at Guizzetti to stop the machine, they said he kept going and ran over Castillo.

After Guizzetti realized he had run over the worker, he backed up and ran over him a second time as two workers yelled and waved their arms to try to stop him, Greenwalt wrote in his criminal complaint.

When police interviewed Guizzetti after the incident, he said he wanted to "clear his name of any wrongdoing" and offered to take a blood test. But after blood was drawn, Guizzetti admitted to Greenwalt that he had smoked marijuana and taken Xanax pills just prior to the accident.

Blood test results showed the presence of Xanax and cocaine in his bloodstream.

Guizzetti was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter, but those charges were withdrawn by the prosecution at his preliminary hearing in August.

His prison sentence will require that he not be allowed to get work release or credit for good time, and that he must seek full-time employment outside the family business after his release.

He must also continue any drug and alcohol counseling that is ordered.

Castillo's daughter told Bortner that she thought Guizzetti's age and promise of rehabilitation were getting him off easy for his crime.

"My father was a very hard-working man who was killed and run over by someone who was operating machinery improperly," Ruiz wrote in her letter. "We place our trust in your hands to make a fair decision. If Anthony Guizzetti comes in front of you following this … please spare workers, drivers on the road, innocent families and incarcerate him immediately."