Driver in crash that killed Conn student sentenced

Judge cites role of alcohol in giving Sposito 4½ years

A New London Superior Court judge admonished James Sposito on Thursday for minimizing the role that alcohol played in the crash that killed a Connecticut College student in December 2015.

Sposito, who was sentenced to four and a half years in jail Thursday for hitting Ahmad Anique Ashraf in an early morning crash on Route 32, had been drinking at several bars that night, according to police.

They were unable to determine his blood alcohol content because they did not identify him as a suspect until several hours after the incident. Regardless, Judge Ernest Green Jr. said in New London Superior Court, Sposito has not appeared to totally take responsibility for his actions.

“My sense of it, Mr. Sposito, is that there’s some significant proportion of the population of individuals who can never drink safely, at all,” Green said. “And if the death of another individual is not enough to bring to your attention that you may be one of those people who cannot ever drink safely, then I am not only troubled by that, but also have some concerns about your ability to make it through probation.”

Sposito, 27, who initially was charged with second-degree manslaughter, pleaded guilty to reduced charges after accepting a plea offer worked out over several months of pretrial negotiations between his attorney, Michael L. Chambers Jr., and prosecutor Raphael Bustamante.

He will serve several concurrent sentences totaling four and a half years in prison, followed by five years of probation, for misconduct with a motor vehicle and tampering with a witness, which are both felony offenses, and evading responsibility, which is an unclassified crime.

He told police he believed he had hit a deer while he was driving home, though court documents showed he told a friend in the hours after the collision that he knew he hit a person because he had found a backpack strap on his car window, according to a court document.

Ashraf, a native of Lahore, Pakistan, was 20 years old and in his ju-

nior year at Connecticut College when he was struck and killed while walking to his dormitory on the main campus from a friend’s apartment on Winchester Road.

Since the accident, crews from Eversource have repaired streetlights along the stretch of Route 32 near the college’s entrance where he was killed, and police have installed a speed-monitoring sign.

Students and staff from the college were present at Thursday’s sentencing hearing, Victim Services Advocate LeeAnn Vertefeuille said in court.

Ashraf’s mother, Asma Riaz, wrote in a statement that she considered traveling from her home in the United Arab Emirates or watching Thursday’s hearing on a video feed, but decided it would be too painful.

“In all these months, a year and five months now, not a single waking moment has passed when I have not missed my son or thought of and prayed for him,” Riaz wrote in a statement Vertefeuille read aloud in court. “The second year is harder than first few months. I have become quieter and more indifferent to worldly matters.”

Riaz said she planned to meet her son in Pakistan five days after he was scheduled to fly there.

“When I told Anique that I would come after five days, he said, ‘Ma, how I will live for another five days without you,’” she wrote. “I don’t have words to describe Anique’s gentleness, fairness, love for humanity, belief in equality, his extremely good insight, his intelligence, his love for me and his sister, his high ambitions. He was a dreamer and extremely sensitive, far mature than his age. He was my adviser, my soul mate, my first love, my little boy.”

A civil wrongful death lawsuit brought by Ashraf’s estate against Sposito is pending. The estate also brought claims against Hot Rod Cafe and Hanafin’s Pub, claiming the two downtown New London bars overserved Sposito that night.

Sposito spoke briefly and quietly before he was sentenced, reading from a prepared statement.

“I honestly did not think I hit a person,” he said. “Had I know it was a person, not a deer, I would have immediately called for help. It all happened so fast ... it was so late, and it was so dark. I understand that I should have stopped.”

Chambers listed several factors that also could have contributed to the crash and to Sposito’s belief that he had struck a deer.

Ashraf was dressed in black and crossing Route 32, which was poorly lit and “for all intents and purposes ... a highway,” Chambers said. Sposito, who is legally blind in one eye but permitted to drive while wearing contacts or glasses, was wearing his contacts and a seat belt, and did not attempt to hide his vehicle once he arrived at his Quaker Hill home, he added.

Also, Chambers said, “people hit deer on Route 32 all the time.”

Sposito agreed to the plea agreement, Chambers said, in order to avoid facing a trial. The 4.5-year sentence will be “impactful” on his client, he said.

“This is not his lifestyle,” Chambers said. “He’s been upstanding, he’s never been in trouble.”

Green, who took over the case from Judge Emmet L. Cosgrove, accepted the agreed-upon sentence and urged Sposito to stay away from alcohol after his probation.

“My hope is that every time that you find yourself in a social situation ... where you might rationalize and think that it’s a social drinking environment, that you should focus on the life of the young man that was lost, and the ripples that came out from his death, and the pain that his mother and sister feel to this day,” he said.

“Make better decisions, Mr. Sposito,” he concluded.

“In all these months, a year and five months now, not a single waking moment has passed when I have not missed my son or thought of and prayed for him. The second year is harder than first few months. I have become quieter and more indifferent to worldly matters.”

WRITTEN STATEMENT FROM ASMA RIAZ, MOTHER OF AHMAD ANIQUE ASHRAF