By Zach Simeone

KNOX — Six months after BKW sophomore Ryan Slingerland was killed in a car crash, his friend, who police say was driving, is being charged with homicide.

Edmund A. Moore, 19, of Knox, was arrested on April 8 for criminally negligent homicide, a felony, and third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, according to a press release from the New York State Police.

Moore, at the time of the accident, did not admit to operating the vehicle, the release says.

“It was determined, after a lengthy investigation, that Moore was indeed driving the car, and with only a learner’s permit, and operating it in a reckless manner at a high rate of speed.”

At about 5 p.m. on Oct. 1, Moore was driving south on Street Road in Knox in a Hyundai sedan with Ashlee Overbaugh, 18, whom police described as Moore’s girlfriend, in the passenger seat, and Slingerland, 16, in the back, according to the State Police.

Not long after they got in the car, it went off the road and struck an embankment and a tree, police said. Helderberg Ambulance, the Knox Fire Department, and the Albany County Sheriff’s Department assisted State Police at the scene, extricating the teens from the car. Moore and Overbaugh were taken to Albany Medical Center, where they were treated for minor injuries.

Slingerland was pronounced dead at the scene, police said at the time, as the result of massive trauma to the head. The police attributed the accident and death to excessive speed, and Slingerland’s failure to wear a seatbelt.

“Although Slingerland could legally ride in the back seat without a seatbelt,” the release concludes, “the use of one may have effected a different outcome for him, and possibly saved his life.”