HINES

the victims never had a chance to react or see him coming.

“He’s never shown any remorse,” Bond said.

Hines’ attorney, Arthur Quinn, countered that the jury acquitted him of causing their deaths. Forty-six letters in support of the officer were submitted, and Hines’ wife, Konstance, testified tearfully Friday that Hines thinks about the victims every night.

“It has affected him,” she said. “It’s really affected our family.”

Hines was suspended without pay from the department, and his wife said he’s found three jobs to support her and their two children.

“He’s the best father I could have ever asked God for,” she cried, telling the judge she couldn’t believe she had to beg him not to take Hines away from her.

According to facts presented at trial, Hines was traveling as fast as 83 mph, and Floyd failed to yield when he tried to make a left turn onto Bartlett Boulevard from Stage Road.

Floyd, a tree cutter, and Sloyan, a Kroger cashier, were ejected from the vehicle in which they were not wearing seatbelts.

Sloyan’s cousin, Kathy Bischoff, remembers her for being “a truly good person.”

“She was fiercely loyal to her family and to her career,” Bischoff wrote. “At the time of her death, though suffering from diabetes and its associated complications, Michelle was determined to reach the tenure of 25 years working as a cashier at Kroger, and refused to apply for disability.”

Sloyan was born with a cleft lip and cleft palate, and “as a young child, she endured several surgeries that left her with a facial scar and a voice that was so sweet, but different from others,” Bischoff said. “She would feel insecure at times, though she overcame this challenge.”

Floyd had “a very large heart,” said Doug Ammons, co-owner of the Shelby Forest General Store that Floyd often visited. “Danny’s heart was bigger than Shelby Forest. He was a very loving and giving person.”

Floyd would take in and nurse abandoned animals. He was a “true animal lover to his core and he passed that on to me,” said his daughter, Danelle Senkbeil.

The crash followed an encounter Hines had with a blue Volkswagen that Hines tried to stop for traveling 44 mph in a 30-mph zone near Woodlawn and Old Brownsville Road.

Hines said he pointed to where he wanted the car to pull over. But the car at one point came at the him, and he had to push himself away from the vehicle, the officer said.

The driver of the Volkswagen then fled, according to testimony, and Hines said he went to look for the car to prevent the driver from hurting someone.