Update: June 2, 2009 — Sara Bender sentenced to 60 days in jail, $1,000 fine, and driver's license suspension of two years.
A jury took less than two hours to reduce the charges against a woman who struck and killed a bicyclist in last year's Tour of the Scioto River Valley (TOSRV).
The motorist was originally charged with the third-degree felony of leaving the scene of a fatal accident. The Pike County, Ohio, jury on Wednesday reduced the charge to a misdemeanor crime of leaving the scene of an accident.
The jury reasoned (and I'm using the term loosely) that because the bicyclist suffered head injuries that killed him instantly, the motorist's failure to stop did not in and of itself result in the bicyclist's death.
Sentence
The third-degree felony carries a 1- to 5-year prison sentence; the maximum punishment for a misdemeanor conviction is a 6-month sentence and $1,000 fine.
TOSRV tour director Charlie Pace told the Columbus Dispatch: “I think they are letting her off easy.”
The bicyclist, William Crowley, 57, was a surgeon who lived in Northville, Michigan. He was bicycling along Route 23 early in the second day of the bike tour when he was struck by a car driven by Sara Bender, 36, of Lucasville.
Left scene
According to the Columbus Dispatch, she testified:
” … she thought something had hit her windshield in the rain and fog and that water was coming through, so she turned around and drove about 10 miles south back to her Scioto County home, where she parked the SUV in the garage and took another vehicle to drive to work. … Back on Rt. 23, she testified, she stopped when she saw emergency workers at the scene of the accident. She told a trooper she thought she had struck a sign.”
Route 23 was termed a “short cut” during the trial; it runs roughly parallel to the designated TOSRV route of State Route 104. Earlier stories explained that he was returning to the route from a motel where he had stayed the night before.
TOSRV
The two-day bike ride between Columbus and Portsmouth will go off as scheduled for this Saturday and Sunday. More than 2,500 cyclists participate in the bike ride that got its start on a Mother's Day weekend back in the early 1960s.
The Crowley death was the first fatality in the ride's history.
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