Man gets 4 months in jail for fleeing after man hit, killed
Most drivers wouldn’t do to a dog what Jason W. Powell did to a pedestrian he struck last year on Westerville Road, a relative of the victim told a Franklin County judge on Thursday.
Powell, 37, fled the scene of the crash and hid his car behind a friend’s house, leaving the body of 21-year-old William D. Crockett by the side of the road.
Crockett’s family and friends weren’t satisfied after Common Pleas Judge Guy Reece placed Powell on probation for three years, suspended his driver’s license for four years and sentenced him to four months in the county jail.
“I don’t want to get emotional,” said Mary Moore, Crockett’s great aunt, when the judge asked whether anyone wanted to comment.
She told Reece that she wished Powell had received a longer period of separation from his family.
“You don’t do a dog that way,” she said of Powell’s actions. “You hit a dog in the street, you say, ‘Oh, I need to tell someone that I hit their dog.’ This was a human being, flesh and blood.”
Reece, who could have sentenced Powell to 39 months in prison, said he understands that “some will disagree with me, and that’s fine. ... I didn’t do it as a favor to (Powell) or his family. I did it because I thought that was the appropriate punishment for him and what he did.”
Because Crockett wasn’t near a crosswalk when he was hit, Powell wasn’t charged with his death. He pleaded guilty last month to a felony count of failing to stop after an accident and a misdemeanor count of obstructing official business.
Moore and the victim’s mother, Althea Crockett, told the judge before sentencing that they have forgiven Powell. Both said that, while they don’t hold him responsible for striking their loved one, they are haunted by what he did afterward.
“The loss in my heart is so painful, but to know that he was left on the road dying is a thought I have to pray away daily,” Mrs. Crockett said in a statement read in court by a victim’s representative from the prosecutor’s office.
Crockett, a 2012 graduate of Westerville Central High School, was walking across Westerville Road just north of Dempsey Road on his way home from work on the evening of Nov. 21 when he was struck by Powell’s car. Crockett died soon after he was taken to Mount Carmel St. Ann’s hospital.
Franklin County deputies found Powell and the car the following morning through tips. By then, it was too late to test him for drugs or alcohol.
Crockett worked as a stock person and dietary aid at the Heartland of Westerville rehab center. Two co-workers told the judge that he was an excellent employee whose death has left a void in their workplace.
“He was not just an employee, he was family,” said his supervisor, Sherae Robinson.
Powell apologized to the family in court but insisted that he didn’t realize he had struck a person, and that he panicked after being covered with glass from his shattered windshield. He said a friend who was with him drove the car away after they stopped and looked but didn’t see what they had hit.
“I’m not a monster at all,” he said. “If I had known that (I hit someone), I wouldn’t have gone nowhere.”
Assistant Prosecutor Donald Miller told the judge that witness accounts refute Powell’s claim that he stopped after the crash and that someone else drove the car from the scene.
The judge said he was troubled to learn that Powell went on Facebook after the crash to post that he had been hurt in an accident but didn’t want to get police involved.
Defense attorney Thomas Gjostein argued that probation was an appropriate sentence for his client, who had no previous criminal record and needs treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.
Powell has been in jail since May, when his bond was revoked for violating his reporting conditions. The four additional months imposed by the judge mean he will spend 306 days in jail.
The conditions of Powell’s probation include regular drug tests. If he violates probation, he could be sent to prison for three years, the judge said.