Parker Drake's two former school mates gave him $20 and two packs of cigarettes for jumping into the frigid ocean off the jetty in Manasquan on Feb. 25, 2015.
MANASQUAN -- An autistic man who jumped into the frigid ocean in Manasquan on a dare from two former schoolmates told a judge he feared he would die before he managed to drag himself onto shore.
In the second day of a trial to determine whether those two schoolmates should be held criminally responsible for that prank, Parker Drake calmly recounted the day Nicholas Formica and Christopher Tilton offered him two packs of Maverick cigarettes and $20 to jump off the icy jetty on Feb. 25, 2015 and stay in the ocean for a minute.
Prosecutors say Drake, now 20 and also suffering from diabetes and Tourette's syndrome, was taken advantage of by his former high school acquaintances, but defense attorneys insist he was more than capable of making his own decisions that bitterly cold February day.
"I didn't know if I was going to make it. I just wanted to get (to shore). I thought 'this may be it'...like I was going to die," Drake told Manasquan municipal Judge Paul Capotorto of his experience after jumping into the ocean.
Trial starts for men who dared autistic teen to jump into frigid ocean
When police initially didn't charge Tilton and Formica, Drake's mother pursued a complaint against them in municipal court. Eventually Manasquan police charged them with a disorderly persons offense of endangering the welfare of an incompetent person.
On the witness stand for about two hours on Tuesday, Drake said he met Tilton and Formica while they were all in Howell High School.
In their statements to police, Formica and Tilton, now 22 and 21, respectively, said they were friends with Drake, but Drake told Capotorto their relationship was no more than trips to McDonald's where they made him pay for their meals.
Drake said that on Feb. 25, 2015, Tilton and Formica called and texted him several times trying to engage him in a conversation before he picked up the phone and spoke with them.
At first, they offered him $100 and a pack of cigarettes to eat a live hamster, he said. He told them he wouldn't do it unless the animal was skinned and cooked, he testified.
When Tilton's attorney, Alton Kenney, later tried to show that decision was evidence that Drake was mentally capable of making choices, Drake explained why he posed that option to eating a live hamster.
"You understood the consequences of eating a live animal, correct? And so you rejected it?" Kenney asked.
"No. I didn't want fur in my teeth," Drake replied.
With a profound facial tic and a habitual ringing of his hands, Drake remained calm on the stand but at times became visibly exasperated by questions from the two defense attorneys. At one point, he blurted out that Formica's attorney, Jason Volet, needed to color his gray hair. At another point, he burst into hysterical laughter when Kenney tried to question him about his version of the Alzheimer's "ice bucket challenge" that Drake named the diaper dance challenge.
On the day of the jump, Drake testified, Tilton and Formica told him to take off his shirt before plunging into the ocean from the jetty. He said the water was so cold on that 18-degree day that he could barely drag himself out of the water. He said he felt at one point that he was going to black out. He was shaking so violently for a while to the point that a passerby asked if he needed an ambulance, but Tilton and Formica assured the man Drake was all right, he said. They didn't take him home, he said, until his shaking was under control.
At one point, he said, his insulin pump started beeping, signaling that it had stopped working. Tilton and Formica laughed at him and said he sounded like a "cyborg," he said.
Anthony Vecchio, the prosecutor, asked Drake why Tilton and Formica were laughing at him while asking him how he felt after the plunge, which was captured on a video played for the judge.
"Looking back, I believe they were making fun of me," he said.
Before the jump, Drake said, he signed a waiver Tilton prepared saying Tilton and Formica couldn't be held liable for any sickness or injury he could incur from the jump and also saying he willingly dived into the ocean.
Through their questioning of him, Kenney and Volet tried to show that Drake was more than capable of making his own decisions and was aware of the consequences of his actions.
His decision to jump into the ocean from the jetty for the extra two packs of cigarettes instead of wade into the ocean from the shoreline was a choice he made because he wanted the cigarettes, they argued through their questioning.
They elicited testimony showing that Drake had been named "Student of the Month" in November 2013 and that he was in mainstream classes for nearly all of his school years.
They noted an evaluation said he was able to dress and groom himself and Drake acknowledged using a debit card to access money he earned as a stock boy at various jobs, including A.C. Moore. He obtained his driver's license two years ago, he said. Drake also said he had thoughts of marrying some day.
Drake's mother, Christine Marshall, testified however, that her son, diagnosed as on the lower end of the autism spectrum at age 6, would not attend to his hygiene or grooming unless helped by her. She said he was not capable of making sound medical or financial decisions. She said he had thoughts of suicide when he was 13 and again after the ocean incident.
MaryAnn Spoto may be reached at mspoto@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @MaryAnnSpoto. Find NJ.com on Facebook.