New 'Nova scholarship remembers student killed in wreck

Daniel Giletta

The family of a Villanova University student killed in 2010 when a motorist fleeing police in a stolen Range Rover crashed into his car in Haverford has started a memorial scholarship fund at the school.

Daniel Giletta, 21, a Villanova senior from Wyckoff, N.J., died Sept. 29, 2010, after Donnie Sayers of Bryn Mawr hit his Volkswagen Jetta at more than 80 mph. Giletta's roommate, Frank Patrick DiChiara, 22, a Villanova junior, was critically injured in the collision but survived. Police arrested Sayers a few days later, and he pleaded guilty last May to homicide by vehicle while driving drunk and on PCP. He was sentenced to 13 to 26 years in prison.

The new scholarship will benefit Villanova students in engineering, Giletta's chosen field of study.

"We are trying to make something positive out of the untimely passing of our son," his father Bernard Giletta said of the scholarship. "He's always on our mind, and we feel that this is a way of keeping his memory alive and significant."

Anyone who wants to contribute to the fund can donate by mail (check payable to Villanova University with “The Daniel M. Giletta ’11 Endowed Memorial Scholarship Fund” written in the memo line of the check. Mail to Office of University Advancement, Villanova University, Picotte Hall at Dundale, 800 Lancaster Ave., Villanova, PA 19085, Attn: Cathleen Parsons-Nikolic). Donations also are being accepted online at www.villanova.edu/makeagift (navigate to the “other” category to earmark the contribution for the Giletta scholarship).

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Dana DiFilippo has covered murder, mayhem and miscellany at the Daily News since 2000. She grew up in Delaware County and studied journalism and photography at Penn State University. E-mail tips to difilid@phillynews.com.

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Phillip Lucas joined the Daily News crime team in 2011. He grew up on the mean streets of Seattle and studied journalism and psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Before landing in the City of Brotherly Love, Phillip was a reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del. Email tips to lucasp@phillynews.com.

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