15 Years in Prison for Joseph Siano, Who Killed Lee-Ann Daley Driving Wrong Way on US1, His 3rd DUI in 9 Years

Ten days short of his 66th birthday, Joseph Michael Siano said this afternoon he knows “there’s a place in hell waiting for me when the time comes.” First, he’ll have to serve 15 years in prison.

Siano, of 22 Birchwood Place in Palm Coast, had been convicted of drunk driving in Volusia County in 2013. A year later, just a month after he got off probation, and though he was banned from driving for any other purpose but for work, he was arrested for drunk driving again, this time in Flagler County, where witnesses had reported him driving recklessly, almost crashing into other cars on Belle Terre Parkway.




The conviction didn’t change him. Eight days before Christmas 2022, he’d been drinking so heavily at Pine Lakes Country Club that the bartender cut him off. He cussed his way out of there, saying he’d go to another bar to continue. Instead, despite being at almost three times above the legal limit for blood-alcohol, despite his cataracts, he got behind the wheel of his own car instead of getting a cheap Uber (his B-Section home in palm Coast would have cost him the equivalent of a couple of drinks)–and drove the wrong way on U.S.. 1.

Lee-Ann Daley, the 46-year-old mother of three who had started a new business as a hair stylist who “loved the ability to make people feel beautiful everyday,” in her young daughter Avery’s words, never had a chance. Not in her Chevy Malibu, not against Siano’s Ram 1500 pick-up truck. It was a head-on collision. She was killed. Siano was not. The crash took place one mile north of Whiteview Parkway. Daley was traveling south. Siano thought he was in the northbound lanes. He’d taken the southbound lanes.

Avery, at 17, arrived at the scene of the crash and saw her mother in the demolished car. “When she arrived there, her mother was still behind the wheel of the car waiting for the medical examiner to arrive,” Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis said. “She was tasked with going home, and she actually had to–and it’s on body camera–tell her brothers that their mother was dead because of his actions.”




“Ms. Daly was someone this community looked up to,” Lewis went on at this afternoon’s sentencing of Siano. He’d pleaded in July, leaving it to Circuit Judge Terence Perkins to set his sentence. “She was someone who was treasured by her family. She was someone who belonged in doing the right thing. She had her own addiction, but did she succumb to it and give in? No, she actually went and she attended AA meetings. She helped others. She was someone who became a surrogate mother to help people who couldn’t have children. She is the model of a human being that we want in this world, and she was stolen from us because of his actions.” Lewis said he wishes the sentence could be more than 15 years, but the only appropriate sentence was 15 years.

That was Perkins’s sentence.

Siano’s attorney, Patrick McGeehan, had asked for a lesser sentence. McGeehan said the state had never made an offer, so pleading was the only alternative because Siano did not want to put the family through a trial. McGeehan underscored the fact that for eight years his client had not had a drunk driving violation or “any violation,” and that he’d expressed remorse. He did not specify the sentence he was seeking for his client. When Siano read his brief statement, McGeehan asked him what punishment he thought the judge should give him.

“I deserve whatever he wants to give me,” Siano said.

McGeehan asked him to tell the court what he was feeling. “I think about them, I can’t think about me. I just know where I’m going,” he said. He also told the court that he hated himself.




“There’s absolutely no way that a downward departure would apply in this case, this is not a single, isolated incident,” Lewis said in response to McGeehan’s request.

The judge agreed, offering an unusually personal preface to his sentence. “I went to law school a long time to help people,” he said, pausing a long time. “This is not one of those circumstances where I can help. The pain of Ms. Daley’s family is palpable and indescribable, and I want you to know that I heard that testimony and I accept them.” He then pronounced Siano guilty of DUI manslaughter and DUI with property damage. He gave him 418 days’ credit on the 15-year sentence.

More than a year ago, when Siano was looking to bond out and Perkins denied him the motion, Perkins had remarked that he was willing to bet that someone had told Siano over the years that sooner or later he’d kill somebody if he didn’t stop drinking and driving.

With “gain time,” or up to a 15 percent reduction on his sentence for good behavior, and the credit, he would leave prison in less than 12 years, when he will be around 77 or 78 years old.

Several people addressed the court, all of them to speak of the loss of Daley and what she had meant to them with that indescribable pain the judge had referred to. As Siano sat at the defendant’s table, considerably more plump than before the crash, Daley’s oldest daughter spoke through tears about the first person she saw and spoke with every morning, the person she considered her mother and best friend, and a friend to so many. She had been a survivor and an inspiration until that December day, conquering her own issues.




“Something about my mom that most of you probably don’t know is her involvement in AA, which is Alcoholics Anonymous,” her daughter said, reading from a prepared statement. “She dedicated her whole life to helping people become sober. At the time of her passing, she was six years sober. She went to meetings every single day, spoke at rehab facilities and on holidays when members of that community had no place to go, she kept the doors of our home open for them. She sponsored multiple people, and was always there to listen who would listen to someone who’s fighting addiction. She sponsored multiple people, and was always there to listen to someone who’s fighting addiction. She saved so many people’s lives. I hope this comes to prove that addiction can be beat. It’s not impossible, and you can better your life if you truly want to.

“Therefore, Joseph Siano has no excuse for any of this. If, by a miracle, my mom had survived the crash, she would have helped him. She would have helped him get sober and better his life, because that’s all she wanted for anyone. Instead, she was killed and ripped from a community that looked up to her. Since her death, I have completely lost myself. That night I arrived on the scene of the crash and saw her car, something I have to live with every day. Seeing her car smashed head on, not only in photos, but in person, has ruined me, because I know she was in there. To think about what she was feeling in that moment kills me, and he felt nothing. For 627 days, I’ve cried every single night, begging for an answer as to why this happened, hoping it’s still a dream.”