3 years for driver in crash that killed baby
A woman who drove her SUV off a Mifflin Township road and struck and killed a 7-month-old boy in a stroller offered no explanation for her actions Wednesday during her sentencing hearing.
Muhuba A. Mohamed, 32, of the Northeast Side, chose to remain silent before Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Laurel Beatty Blunt sent her to prison for three years and imposed a lifetime suspension of her driver’s license.
“You should never get behind the wheel of a car ever again,” the judge told her.
In October, Beatty Blunt convicted Mohamed of aggravated vehicular homicide, ruling that she was driving recklessly when she caused the death of Micah Ferebee. The judge could have sentenced her to as many as five years in prison.
Mohamed had no drugs or alcohol in her system when her Toyota Rav4 went off the right side of Westerville Road near Innis Road and through a mailbox before slamming into the stroller as it was being pushed by the infant’s father about 5 p.m. June 2, 2016. She never hit the brakes or turned the steering wheel to avoid a collision, continuing until the vehicle struck a house.
“I still don’t know why this happened,” said the father, Kenan M. Ferebee, who was tossed into the air by the impact but escaped serious injury. “I still don’t know how this happened. ... We have to drive by that place every day. It’s a constant reminder of what happened.”
His voice broke as he spoke of seeing his son lying on the ground and picking up his lifeless body.
Mohamed had been in a similar crash just four days earlier, swerving off Interstate 71 and crashing into a highway median in Delaware County. In both crashes, she was driving with a temporary permit but didn’t have a licensed driver with her, as required by law.
Hers was one of three hearings Wednesday in which Beatty Blunt sentenced defendants for causing fatal crashes. In the others:
Deandreo R. Brown, 25, of the North Side was sentenced to four years in prison for a drunken-driving crash that killed Sherlene Parker, 68, on North Cassidy Avenue near East Hudson Street on the Northeast Side on Dec. 19. He pleaded guilty last month to aggravated vehicular homicide. Brown’s blood-alcohol content was measured at 0.208, more than twice the level at which a person is considered impaired under Ohio law, after his car rear-ended Parker’s SUV, knocking it into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer.
Patricia E. Hayes, 40, of Reynoldsburg, was sentenced to 3 years in prison for offenses that included causing a head-on crash that killed Michael Bates, 27, on Gender Road between Wright Road and Nottinghill Trail Drive on the Far East Side on May 10, 2015. Hayes pleaded guilty last month to a misdemeanor count of vehicular homicide. The bulk of her sentence was for violating probation in a 2016 case of illegally obtaining oxycodone.
Hayes showed up to Wednesday’s hearing with drugs in her system, a morning test revealed. The judge told Hayes she found it “shocking and appalling” that the threat of prison wasn’t enough to keep her clean.
Brown and Hayes both apologized in court to their victim’s families.
The family of Micha Ferebee got no such message from Mohamed, who plans to appeal her conviction.
A native of Somalia, Mohamed didn’t testify at her trial, which she listened to with the help of a Somali interpreter.
Beatty Blunt said that she has received email and phone messages making reference to Mohamed’s nationality and religion.
“That has nothing to do with this case,” she said, “and I didn’t take any of that into consideration.”