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Perhaps it was fitting that the trial of Thomas Junta ended as murkily as it began. As he stood stoically in a Cambridge, Mass., courtroom last Friday evening, accused of killing fellow hockey dad Michael Costin, the judge asked the jury forewoman for a verdict on the first charge of voluntary manslaughter: guilty or not guilty. The forewoman stared at her verdict slip, scrunched her eyes quizzically and shot a pleading glance at the juror on her left. The silence seemed eternal. "Guilty," she replied at last. "Guilty of what?" the judge asked. "No. 3," she replied, referring to the third item on the verdict slip: the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. The confusion in the courtroom was so great that no one seemed to realize that the trial--replete throughout with conflicting versions of the truth--had finally come to a close.
The damage wrought by the case, however, could not be clearer. Costin is dead. Junta is in jail. Their kids are fatherless. In the most immediate sense, Costin's killing--which stemmed from his dispute with Junta over their sons' play in a pickup hockey game--was a tragedy that tore through two families. In the wider world, it ripped the fabric of the men's hometowns, where kids grow up skating at the local pond and find release in sports. It forced the hockey world to confront questions about the roughness of the game. And the case raised disturbing questions about parental rage at youth sporting events.
It all started on a leisurely summer day in July 2000. Junta's son and Costin's three boys were playing a practice game at the Burbank Ice Arena in Reading, Mass., with Costin refereeing. The play got rough, and Junta, who was watching from the bleachers, came down to complain. "That's hockey," Costin said, according to Junta. "No, it isn't," Junta replied. "It's supposed to be a fun time." When the game was over, the two confronted each other again by the locker rooms. They began scuffling, Junta's 275-pound frame overpowering the 156-pound Costin, according to some witnesses. (Both had violent streaks: Junta had been arrested before for assault and battery, and Costin had been jailed a half-dozen times for crimes that included assaulting a cop.) Bystanders broke up the fight and, according to one witness, Junta was ordered to leave the rink.
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Though he left, Junta returned within minutes. "His face was very red" and "his hands were clenched," said the assistant rink manager, who testified that Junta shoved her out of the way and bruised her. Junta entered the rink area, and he and Costin clashed again. They wrestled each other, slammed into a wall and fell to the floor. With Costin lying on his back and Junta kneeling above him, Junta pummeled him with anywhere from three to more than 10 punches. Then, said several witnesses, he grabbed Costin's head and slammed it against the floor. "Dad, stop!" Junta's son yelled, according to his testimony. Another witness said she screamed, "You're going to kill him!" He did. The blows ruptured a vital artery in Costin's neck, testified a former medical examiner, and sent him into a coma (he died two days later). His head was so severely bashed, the examiner said, that during the autopsy Costin's brain "came squeezing out like toothpaste." All the while, kids were watching the fatal dispute prompted by a father's worries about their rough play.
The episode has triggered plenty of soul-searching. In Junta's hometown of Reading, where talk radio and neighborhood stores have been filled with discussion of the killing, residents are wrestling with a confounding question: was this simply two hotheads lashing out, or a sign of a broader social problem? They especially lament that violence tainted the Burbank rink, which is named after the peaceful philanthropist who funded it with the town's kids in mind. In the hockey community, too, debate has been vigorous. Aficionados worry that the public will regard Costin's killing as "an expression of inherent ills in our game," says Joe Bertagna, a resident of nearby Gloucester and executive director of the Ameri-can Hockey Coaches Association. But "it's not a hockey issue," says Dan Esdale, president of Massachusetts Hockey, which governs the state's private leagues. "It's a societal thing" that just happened to take place at an ice rink. Others fret over unruly parents and coaches. Before all this, says Bertagna, there were concerns that "it was only a matter of time before something happened."
So what can be done? Bertagna suggests a Pennsylvania Little League program as a model: eject the kid rather than the parent from a game when the parent acts up. At Massachusetts Hockey, new measures to rein in parents are imminent, says Esdale. One possibility: holding local education sessions and requiring parents to sign codes of conduct. Even lawmakers are getting involved. When he was still a Massachusetts state senator last year, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch of Boston introduced a bill--in response to the Costin killing--that would provide funds to towns that volunteered to adopt codes of conduct. It is still sitting in committee.
The broken lives of the Costin and Junta families are argument enough to try something. One of the Costin boys is in foster care (Costin was a single father who had only recently regained custody of his kids after a bout with alcoholism). The others are staying with his sister's family. Junta's wife and two kids must now make do without his truckdriver's salary. And Junta sits in jail awaiting sentencing on Jan. 25--in all likelihood, three to five years under the state's sentencing guidelines. All the kids continue to play hockey. But now they won't have a father to cheer them on from the bleachers.
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