STUART, Fla. — The chaperone of a 2002 barbecue that ended in tragedy told jurors that, given the chance, she would not do anything differently the night a 16-year-old consumed two or more beers at her home, then rammed his car into a Cadillac, killing two teenage passengers.

"I felt I did the right thing," Barbara O'Brien read from her sworn deposition. "I had a safe place for kids."

O'Brien and her husband are being sued by the parents of one of the crash victims, 14-year-old Sarah Stone, under Florida's "Open House Party" law, which was designed to deter underage drinking.

After the June 17, 2002, party ended, Stephen Bromstrup raced through a residential area at speeds topping 70 miles per hour. Then, with both feet on the brake pedal, he skidded hundreds of feet through a stop sign and smashed into a Cadillac, killing Stone and Alexandra Quaroni, 13. Two others in the Cadillac survived with severe injuries.

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The crash was a horrific end to a last-minute barbecue at the O'Briens' two-acre compound, where kids swam in the O'Briens' pool, bounced on their trampoline, fished off their private dock, relaxed in their speed boat and illegally consumed alcohol.

Stephen Bromstrup, now 19, recounts the fatal crash.

O'Brien said she encountered underage drinking three times during the party. She was outraged each time, she said, and disciplined the offenders.

Shortly after the party began, O'Brien said she spotted one of the teens, Mario Giardono, shoving a fifth of gin into a bag in the kitchen. She grabbed it out of his hand.

"I knew it was booze and I was so mad," O'Brien told the jury. "I wanted to turn it over his head, and I dumped it."

In testimony lasting much of the day, O'Brien read from her deposition taken after the accident. She said she had a zero-tolerance policy on underage drinking and that whenever she discovered anyone at the party violating that rule, she dumped the alcohol.

"I poured it out," O'Brien said. "That was the punishment."

Nineteen-year-old Matthew Gordon, who was seated in the back seat of Bromstrup's Pontiac Firebird during the accident, bolstered O'Brien's testimony, saying he heard her get angry and pour out the alcohol.

Gordon also reinforced the O'Briens' claim that bravado and speed were to blame for Bromstrup's reckless driving, not alcohol.

The shaggy-haired Gordon, who called the crash "the worst accident of my life," said Bromstrup had no trouble keeping the car on the road and did not seem impaired when they left the party.

Prior incidents

Despite Gordon's testimony, the defendants' case may be hindered by several alcohol-related incidents at their home before the 2002 party.

O'Brien twice found alcohol tucked in bushes and left by a fire pit before the cookout.

At a sleepover in December 2001, O'Brien said she found six Smirnoff Ice bottles and six beer cans lying by a fire pit where they occasionally build bonfires.

"I was so angry," O'Brien read from her deposition. "They knew I was not a happy camper."

After she and her husband John discovered the alcohol, they summoned the girls and insisted they call their parents that night, according to O'Brien. She also grounded her daughter Jenny for the incident.

O'Brien's own daughter refuted her mother's testimony, however. Jenny O'Brien told the jury her mother summoned her the following morning at 5 or 6 a.m. She did not remember any of the girls being forced to call their parents that night, but agreed that she was grounded after the incident.

On another evening in 2002, some male friends went to the O'Brien home "to hang out." On the following morning, O'Brien said she discovered a 12-pack of beer in the bushes.

"I read my daughter the riot act and asked her who brought it," O'Brien said. "[Jenny] was grounded for the rest of the summer."

The suit filed in the 19th Judicial Circuit in Martin County is the final stage in a string of lawsuits filed against the Bromstrups, the store that allegedly sold the beer to the teens and the O'Briens. This is the only case that has gone to trial.

The trial will continue Wednesday and is expected to last another two weeks. It is being streamed live on Court TV Extra.