The detective who conducted the investigation says it is unlikely Mark Paozella will face jail time if convicted.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
An Orange County man has been charged with two counts of misdemeanor manslaughter following an investigation of his involvement in the November deaths of Malibu residents Keith Patrick Naylor and Tyler Love.
Naylor and Love were traveling by motorcycle on Pacific Coast Highway near Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades on the evening of Nov. 12 when, according to Los Angeles Police Department investigators, they were struck by Mark Paozella’s Mercedes sedan.
“The driver’s car containing his family made a U-turn and neglected to see the two individuals on a motorcycle, and a collision occurred,” said Detective Mike Dunn from the LAPD’s West Traffic Division, who added that the U-turn was illegal.
Paozella, a 40-year-old resident of Corto de Caza in southern Orange County, was not charged with a felony, Dunn said, because it was determined he did not cause the accident due to “gross negligence.” Dunn said it would have been a felony had Paozella been speeding or been intoxicated, but neither of those situations occurred, Dunn said.
Love was driving the motorcycle at the time of the collision, and it was investigated whether he had been speeding. Dunn said that determination could not be made after reconstructing the incident, but he said he does not believe Love had been speeding.
The case is being handled by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office. A call was made to the office and the person who answered the phone said there was no record of the case in the computer system. A call was then made to Dunn, who said the information had just been sent to the office and probably had not been filed.
Dunn said it is possible a person charged with misdemeanor manslaughter could face jail time if convicted, but he said that is usually not the case. He added that people facing such charges don’t regularly go to trial and instead make plea bargains.
Paozella is not listed in the telephone directory, so he could not be reached for comment.
The deaths of Naylor and Love devastated many people in Malibu who knew the two childhood friends. An estimated 1,800 people attended a memorial service at Bluffs Park.
Naylor and Love grew up together and met when they entered Malibu Park Junior High School as sixth-graders. They belonged to a group of local boys who had grown up playing and surfing together. They graduated from Malibu High School in 2001.
Love had taken a break from college to study in Italy, where he became interested in men’s fashion.
Arriving back in U.S. last year, he had secured a prestigious men’s stylist internship at the Gucci salon in Beverly Hills and was studying for a degree in fashion at Brooks College in Long Beach.
Naylor was a 2005 UC Santa Barbara graduate, majoring in business. He was working at Pritchett-Rapf & Associates in Malibu and was studying to get a real estate license.