Avid county bicyclist remembered at sentencing
Driver in fatal crash goes to jail in negotiated plea
Michael Hackman had an 8 a.m. tennis date on July 19, 2020, but — ever the active figure — decided to go for an early evening bicycle ride the day before through the rolling countryside south of his home in Tredyffrin.
The match, against a close friend, would never happen.
Around 7:45 p.m. on July 18, Hackman was struck from behind on his bicycle by a motorist who did not immediately stop to check on his condition or call for help. He was rushed to Paoli Hospital, where he died.
On Friday, his widow told a Common Pleas Court judge of the fog she went through that day, and in the days, weeks and years since that crash, and remembered having to take on the mundane tasks of life without her partner in 35 years of marriage despite an overwhelming grief — including letting his friend know they would not be able to get together for tennis.
“I texted my friend Nancy to say Michael was in an accident and couldn’t play in the Sunday morning match,” Charlene Hackman told Judge Analisa Sondergaard at the sentencing hearing for her husband’s killer, driver Michael Larkin. She had gone to the Paoli emergency room after being called there with word of his situation.
“Nancy called back saying Paul and she would come to the ER,” she said, reading from a prepared statement. “I was grateful to have them since I didn’t know how I would have driven home carrying the hospital valuable bag I was given in the ER.”
Charlene Hackman’s description was among three victim impact statements given to Sondergaard before she formally imposed a sentence of 11 ½ to 23 months in Chester County Prison on Larkin, a Delaware County school district officer who pleaded guilty in December to counts of recklessly endangering another person, a misdemeanor, and duty to render aid, a summary offense as his trial in Hackman’s death was about
to get underway.
The sentence had been agreed to by Larkin, his attorney, and the Chester County District Attorney’s Office, which secured a lengthier term of punishment for the charges in a case like Larkin’s. The defendant was taken into custody following the hearing, and spent his first night in prison Friday. He will not be eligible for parole until January 2024.
Also speaking at the proceeding were Hackman’s daughter, Chelsea Hackman, and his oldest brother, Richard Hackman. Both recalled the energy Hackman displayed in his life — one of activity in sports, travel, family and service to the wider community in Chester County, especially for the homeless and others less fortunate. They also enumerated the various ways that his death had left a vacuum in their lives.
“The void in our lives now is much bigger than losing a brother, said Richard Hackman, speaking for his brothers and sisters. “It is as if a part of our own life is gone forever. I know that speak for each of my siblings when I say that we miss Michael every single day.”
But it was his widow who gave Sondergaard an intimate view of how she came to grasp the death of her husband of three decades and the turmoil she still faces from his loss.
She said she knew immediately that Hackman was dead when the caller from the hospital identified herself as a spiritual advisor. When she arrived, she was led to a small room near the admission desk. “The trauma surgeon came in and said with tears in his eyes that he did everything he could but couldn’t save Michael.” She had to call her daughter in Ambler with the news, breaking up a summer family barbecue where she knew her son, Sean, and her grandson would be present.
“I walked into the ER treatment room to find my husband pale and lifeless with a tube in his mouth and an IV in his neck, and blood in his ears,” she said. “I questioned the staff about what had happened. They told me nothing was known about what caused the accident, so I kissed Michael’s forehead and left the room.”
What had occurred, it became clear during the ensuing investigation by Willistown police, was that Larkin, driving a Mercedes Benz convertible, came up behind Hackman on his bike on windy Providence Road near the Radnor Hunt Club, and struck him , knocking him off the bicycle and onto the side of the road. The 64-year-old suffered a fractured skull.
Larkin, who had perhaps been blinded by the setting sun, had just come from a nearby restaurant when he ordered dinner to go and had what police believe may have been an alcoholic drink.
According to a criminal complaint filed in the case by Willistown Detective Sgt. Stephen Jones, around 7:48 p.m., a motorist called police dispatch to say she had come across a cyclist’s body along the road in the 800 block of Providence Road. A Willistown officer, Mark Monroe, arrived at the scene eight minutes later, and spoke with the woman as he tended to the victim, who was badly inured. The woman said she had seen no other cars in the area when she arrived.
Two others who came upon Hackman, a couple who had been having a family dinner at a home on nearby Hunt Club Lane, said they did not recall seeing any cars coming toward them as they drove east on Providence Road before coming to the crash scene. The woman passenger, who was with her husband, said no one there identified themselves as being involved in the crash.
But the woman, Laura Kassad, told police that one motorist had returned to the area twice while she was directing traffic around the scene. She said she told the man, driving a white convertible with the top down matching Larkin’s Mercedes, that there had been a “bad accident” and that the road was blocked. The man, who fit Larkin’s appearance, turned around and drove away west on Providence Road, she said.
Some time later, the woman spotted the car again in a line of traffic behind her husband’s car that was parked in the roadway. The driver did not say anything about being involved in the crash, nor did he get out and try to provide assistance to Hackman.
“He asked, ‘How bad is it?’ Which knocked me off guard,” said Kassab at a preliminary hearing in 2021 before former Magisterial District Judge Thomas Tartaglio. “That seemed a bit odd.” None of the other motorists she spoke with at the time asked her that, she recalled.
Personnel from Malvern Ambulance Company arrived on the scene around 7:57 p.m., and left with Hackman’s body at 8:12 p.m. He was declared dead at Paoli Hospital at 8:47 p.m.
Eventually, after speaking by phone with his brother, attorney Joseph Larkin, and then with Media criminal defense attorney Art Donato, Larkin was contacted by Willistown police Detective Robert Will and Officer Mark Monroe, who met him in his parked car on a nearby side street, where he had sat for hours. When they asked Larkin what had happened, he said he had thought he hit a deer in the dusky twilight. “And then he looked in the rearview mirror and saw a bicycle.”
The law under which Larkin, 40, of Marple was initially charged — accidents involving death or personal injury, more commonly known as leaving the scene of an accident — require motorists involved in a crash to stop and render aid to any victims, and to contact police and detail their role in the collision. Had he been convicted of that charge he would have faced a mandatory minimum prison term of three years, served in a state penitentiary.
The case was prosecuted by First Assistant District Attorney Michael Barry and Assistant District Attorney Robert Goggin. On Friday, Barry characterized the proceeding as one filled with sadness, even though the terms of Larkin’s plea were known and his fate a foregone conclusion.
Larkin’s attorney, Daniel Bush of the West Chester form of Lamb McErlane, said his client chose not to address Sondergaard before being taken into custody or to offer public apologies to Hackman’s family. “He had spoken to the family outside the courthouse after the guilty plea (in December),” Bush said in an e-mail. “He told the court today that he would rather keep that personal conversation confidential and therefore he didn’t make any further statement today.”
Charlene Hackman concluded her brief remarks before the judge with a description of how the couple had planned to retire and travel the world, how her husband had devoted himself to mentoring, fatherhood, and volunteerism, and how she had lived her life in a haze since he was killed.
“Through this fog you are expected to plan a funeral, pay medical bills and keep up with the normal household chores. Simple tasks were a heavy load, and food seemed void of taste.” Grief counseling helped, and support from family and friends helped her survive, she said.
“I still have flashbacks of the accident and the ER experience,” she told Sondergaard. “I am not sure how many years these flashbacks will continue. Michael will always be loved and missed.”