LEWISTON – Kelley Karkos squeezed her eyes shut, her mouth moving in prayer as she sat at the back of the courtroom Tuesday morning.

Minutes later, after the verdict, she was kneeling on the courtroom floor, sobbing uncontrollably.

A judge had just dismissed charges, including manslaughter, against her son, Kyle Karkos, who turned 19 a day earlier.

He had been driving his 1993 Honda Civic the night of April 5, 2006. His friend Kenny Jellison Jr., 18, had been in the passenger seat.

They had been racing another car down Canal Street. Jellison’s younger brother, Travis, had been in that car.

There’s no doubt the two cars raced to the second traffic light on the one-way street. After that, Karkos sped ahead through two red lights and lost control of his car at a left-hand curve. His car slammed into a light pole on the passenger side, killing Jellison.

Until the point where Karkos ran the red lights, the facts seem clear, 8th District Court Judge Mary Gay Kennedy told friends and family of Karkos and Jellison assembled in the small Androscoggin County Superior courtroom. It’s after that point that the facts get murky, she said.

Did Karkos continue to race, even though the other car had stopped at the second light? “We don’t know for sure,” Kennedy said. No one, not even the Maine State Police trooper who wrote the accident reconstruction report, could say how fast Karkos’ car was going in the posted 25-mph zone when he lost control of the car.

For those reasons, Kennedy said she wasn’t able to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Karkos’ actions were a “gross deviation from standard” conduct. That would have meant the driver did something more than just “wrong,” she said. The Auburn teenager would have to have known that “His conduct posed a serious risk of death or harm to himself or others but did not care.”

After weighing the evidence for an hour, Kennedy decided at 11:30 a.m. that Karkos had behaved in a “foolish and immature” manner and exercised “genuinely poor judgment” when he drove so carelessly, but his actions didn’t rise to the level of making him criminally responsible for the death of Jellison, she said.

Kennedy also dismissed juvenile petitions alleging reckless conduct and driving to endanger.

Karkos had been 17 years old at the time of the crash. Had he been convicted, he would have served any sentence at a juvenile facility, then been released when he turned 21.

Instead, he left the courthouse swallowed by the entourage of family and friends that had shadowed him at the courthouse during his one-and-a-half day trial.

Karkos, who had shown little emotion during the trial, appeared confused at first as he looked around the courtroom after Kennedy read her verdict. He turned, hugged his mother and burst into tears.

Jellison’s family, stunned by Kennedy’s final words, filed out of the courtroom quickly.

The teenager’s death had caused a rift between the two families. Courthouse officers were careful to keep the groups separated as they made their way to the exit.

Kennedy recognized the emotional toll on the families and thanked them for maintaining their composure in the courtroom during the trial.

“This has been incredibly difficult,” she said before announcing her verdict. “The loss and sorrow you all feel … it’s been palpable.”

Outside the courthouse, Karkos talked to reporters. To the Jellison family, he said: “I’m deeply sorry. … It was just an accident.” He said the memory of that night would stay with him the rest of his life.

Leonard Sharon, Karkos’ attorney, said Kennedy made a “very courageous decision” in the highly emotional case.

Sharon said reasonable doubt about the extent of Karkos’ negligence was too much for prosecutors to overcome with the limited evidence they were able to gather from the crash scene.

Prosecutors had sought to show Karkos was speeding recklessly out of control when his car slid sideways and hit the pole.

A witness said she had to pull over her truck when she saw Karkos coming fast up Canal Street. She said he later admitted he had been racing and urged the other car’s occupants to tell her the same thing.

The only defense witness was an expert who downplayed conclusions drawn by Maine State Police Trooper Lawrence Rose. The trooper had investigated the crash and had written an accident reconstruction report, concluding excessive speed as a primary factor. But he wasn’t able to pinpoint the speed that Karkos’ car had been traveling when he apparently lost control.