Bucks lawyer gets 10-25 for fatal hunting accident

A Montgomery County lawyer yesterday was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison for his role in the shooting death of a married father of two during a Bucks County hunting expedition last year.

Theresa Groh, the widow of victim Barry Groh, called defendant David Manilla, 49, "a spoiled rich boy" and said she hoped he would rot in prison, according to news reports.

Manilla is "a man who believes he can do whatever he pleases without ever truly paying for or accepting responsibility for any of his crimes," said Groh, who was in court with her two sons.

Bucks County Judge Albert Cepparulo sentenced Manilla to 2 1/2 to 5 years for involuntary manslaughter and another 7 1/2 to 20 years for illegal possession of two weapons. The defendant, who pleaded guilty to the charges, had been convicted in the 1980s of aggravated assault and that precluded him from possessing a firearm.

Manilla was hunting with a friend and his uncle, former Montgomery County District Attorney Michael Marino, on his Richland Township property in November. He mistakenly thought Groh, 52, was a deer and shot him with a banned rifle. Groh was near a creek and waiting for help to transport an eight-point buck that he had killed that day, the first of deer-hunting season.

The rifle shot ripped through his aorta, police said.

The three men approached the victim, who by now was in the creek, but no one called 9-1-1 until a half-hour later inside Manilla's residence, police said.

"I know that you will never be able to forgive me," he told the Groh family, according to an Inquirer report, "but I am truly and heartfully sorry for my actions."