WNEM TV 5 Teen connected to dragging death enters plea

An 18-year-old Unionville man has pleaded no contest in connection to an incident where a teenager was struck by a car and dragged for almost one block.

Cody Christopher Kalis, 18, entered the plea to charges of operating while intoxicated and/or under the influence of drugs causing death on Jan. 13. The charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

According to Tuscola County Sheriff's department, Zachary Harp, 16, of Caro, was struck by a car driven by Kalis and dragged nearly one block sometime before 4 a.m. on March 20, 2011. Kalis was 17 at the time of the incident.

Harp, a football player and freshmen at Ownedale-Gagetown High School, died at the hospital a short time later. Investigators said it all began with a fight after a party at a home on Elizabeth Street in Gagetown.

"A kid was asked to leave, he got mad," Samantha Culhane said last March. Culhane is a neighbor living close to the home where the party took place. "Zachary was ran over, and then the kid came back and clipped the kids that were trying to help Zachary, so that's what I heard and I seen: one of the other kids walking around yesterday limping and looking a little banged up."

Neighbors told TV5 last March that they can't understand how a fight like that could turn deadly. "I've seen him around town. I know that he was a well-liked kid, that he wasn't really a troublemaker," Culhane said when speaking of Kalis.

Kalis had been facing open murder and manslaughter with a motor vehicle charges.

Sentencing will take place on Jan. 31 in 54th Judicial Circuit Court.

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