Farmingdale driver in fatal still in custody after appearance postponed

A Farmingdale man remained in jail Monday after his recent arrest on weapon charges while on probation in connection with the deaths of five teenagers in a 2014 street-race wreck.

But Cory Gloe, 20, didn’t appear in a Mineola court for a conference in his new case after his Legal Aid lawyer asked a judge to waive his appearance.

However, relatives of some of the 2014 crash victims, who had criticized Gloe’s sentence in the original manslaughter case as too lenient, came to court and later demanded that he now be put in prison.

Acting state Supreme Court Justice Terence Murphy set Gloe’s next court date as Nov. 1.

Court spokesman Daniel Bagnuola said probation officials will have to forward any allegation of a violation of probation regarding Gloe to the court for the judge’s review.

If Murphy then finds Gloe in violation of probation, he can resentence him in the manslaughter case, Bagnuola said.

Police arrested Gloe on Wednesday after they said he fired a shotgun into the air in his backyard near other homes, including while a 3-year-old girl was in the yard next door. No one was hurt, police said.

Gloe faces two felony reckless endangerment charges, two misdemeanor weapon counts and a misdemeanor count of endangering a child’s welfare and is jailed with bail set at $100,000, according to authorities.

Gloe’s attorney, Linda Lebovitz, and a spokesman for the Nassau district attorney’s office both declined to comment after court Monday.

In May, Murphy sentenced Gloe to 6 months in jail and 5 years of probation, while also granting him youthful-offender status that sealed his criminal record.

The judge said Gloe would face up to 4 years in prison if he violated his probation. Murphy also said at the time of sentencing that the punishment was designed to get Gloe “scared straight.”

Gloe had pleaded guilty to every charge against him, including five counts of manslaughter in the deaths of Tristan Reichle, 17, Jesse Romero, 18, Carly Lonnborg, 14, Noah Francis, 15, and Cody Talanian, 17.

The friends, all of whom had attended Farmingdale High School, became known after the May 10, 2014, tragedy as the “Farmingdale Five.”

Prosecutors said the crash occurred after Gloe goaded Reichle into racing and Reichle lost control of his car, crashing into an oncoming vehicle, and killing all five people in his car.

Mark McGlone, Lonnborg’s uncle, said Monday that Gloe should go to prison now and “should have been there for what he did the first time.”

Celeste Tziamihas, Francis’ sister and guardian, agreed that Gloe “needs to be locked up.”

“The loss of all of our loved ones has seemed to make no impact on him,” she said. “For him not to have changed, something’s wrong.”