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Teen driver is charged with DUI-manslaughter

By JACOB H. FRIES
Published March 3, 2007

DUNEDIN - A Belleair Beach teenager was arrested Friday on a DUI-manslaughter charge in connection with a Nov. 25 crash that killed a 74-year-old man.

Jesse Lee Chitren, 17, was booked into the Pinellas County Jail as an adult, then released after posting $30,000 bail. A man who answered the phone at Chitren's residence would not comment on the case.

According to authorities, Chitren was speeding, ran a red light and had a blood-alcohol level of 0.129 percent. State law presumes a motorist is too impaired to drive if his or her blood-alcohol level is 0.08 percent or higher.

The crash occurred at 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 25, when Chitren ran a red light at Belcher Road and Solon Avenue and struck a Chevrolet van driven by Christos Neofotistos, 74, of Dunedin, authorities say. Neofotistos was thrown from the vehicle and died five days later.

Chitren, who drove a 2000 Nissan truck, was hospitalized with serious injuries and later released.

Neofotistos' daughter, Voula Coulouras, 41, of Palm Harbor said the family was troubled by Chitren's lack of remorse. They found a photograph showing Chitren's injuries on his MySpace Web site above the caption, "from my little accident."

"A little accident? It killed my father," Coulouras said.

Neofotistos was born in Greece and came to the United States in 1951. He moved to Florida from Massachusetts in 1975. He worked as an airline mechanic for Pan Am. He served in the Army during the Korean War. He raised three daughters with his wife, Vasiliki.

"He was a kind man, a decent man, ... an immigrant with nothing who built a future for himself and his family," said Coulouras, a social studies teacher at East Lake High School. "But most of all, he was a great dad."

[Last modified March 3, 2007, 00:46:56]