Nampa,ID : Nampa man who fled the scene of fatal pedestrian crash gets up to year in prison program on may, Monday 22th 2017
A Nampa man who hit and killed an Australian tech guru and injured his two young daughters last October before fleeing the scene has been ordered to serve up to a year in a “rider” prison rehabilitation program.
Tristian Donovan Meyers, 20, appeared in 3rd District Court in Caldwell on Monday for sentencing on one count of felony leaving the scene of an accident and one count of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter.
He pleaded guilty to the charges in late March after originally facing two counts of felony injury to a child, felony vehicular manslaughter, three counts of misdemeanor leaving the scene of an accident and one count of misdemeanor DUI.
Police say they responded to an anonymous call of an injured pedestrian about 7:30 a.m. Oct. 22 at a residence on Hillcrest Way in Nampa. There police found 43-year-old Leslie Nassar lying in a gutter with injuries to his upper torso and head.
Nassar was taken to Saint Alphonsus in Nampa where he was declared dead. Police were able to track to the anonymous phone call to dispatch to Meyers’ phone and while speaking to police, Meyers admitted to hitting Nassar in his white 1992 Ford F-150 while he was turning onto Hillcrest Way.
Meyers told police he pulled over and found Nassar lying in the gutter, making gurgling sounds. Police say Meyers admitted to panicking, fleeing the scene and calling 911 shortly after.
Police say Meyers admitted to drinking two 12-ounce cans of beer at 1 a.m. that morning, but said that he didn’t feel intoxicated when the crash occurred.
Nassar was a much-loved Australian social media satirist and tech pioneer, according to The Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian newspaper. He had been co-running a digital production studio, Wrangling Cats, based in Sydney at the time of his death.
In court Monday, Marisse DeThomas, the mother of Nassar’s three girls, said Nassar had been working legally in the U.S. for a year when he was killed. She said two of her young girls were with their father when he was hit, and both were injured.
One experienced a concussion and vomited for two days after the incident while the other fears white trucks and has asked why a white truck wanted to “kill her dad,” DeThomas said.
DeThomas said losing Nassar was like losing a piece of herself.
“I spent 12 years living abroad with Leslie in Australia, and every time I’d start to make friends in one town, we’d move,” she said. “There is no one besides Leslie who knows what I was like at 28, 32 or 36.”
DeThomas’ oldest daughter, a 12-year-old who was 11 when the incident occurred, told the court the last time she saw her father was when he watched her get on a bus to attend her first wrestling match the morning of the crash.
“He said he loved me and would see me later, and then he turned and walked away,” she read from a statement. “And now he’ll never get to teach me to animate, I’ll never sit next to him to play video games or eat out. I miss him and the dog, bear hugs, and his always being there.”
Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Anne Voss said that the state tried to charge Meyers with felony vehicular manslaughter, but that it couldn’t be proven that alcohol was directly involved in the incident.
She said Meyers’ decision to flee the scene of the crash shortly after he hit Nassar was one of many bad choices he made leading up to the incident.
“This began the day before with him deciding to go to a party and stay up all night drinking,” she said. “Even hours after the incident, his blood-alcohol content was 0.065.”
She said Meyers has shown little to no remorse for Nassar’s death and the trauma it has caused his family. Voss said Meyers coldly described Nassar as “some high-tech guy from Australia.”
She said of the 11 character witness letters submitted on Meyers’ behalf, not one mentions the impact of Nassar’s death on his family.
“The letters focus on how the incident has affected his (Meyers’) life and what he’s been through,” Voss said.
Meyers said he doesn’t need treatment for alcohol and denied being impaired when the crash occurred, she said, and he lied to police about knowing the extent of Nassar’s injuries when he pulled over to see whom he had hit.
“He told police that he got out of his truck and heard Leslie gurgling,” she said. “There’s no way anyone would not have at least guessed that person was injured.”
Voss said that Meyers’ actions have resulted in three girls being raised without a father and that though his friends and family say he has struggled and laid awake at night thinking about the incident, he never bothered to know Nassar’s first name.
Meyers’ attorney James Vavrek said that there exists a “great misconception” about Meyers, who will carry the burden of Nassar’s death for the rest of his life.
“He is thoughtful and scared,” Vavrek said. “He was scared that morning.”
The defense attorney said that Meyers didn’t see Nassar the morning he was struck because Nassar was wearing dark clothes. He also noted that even though Meyers fled the scene, he called 911 to report the crash.
Vavrek asked the court to consider a five-year probation sentence, in which he would be required to complete 200 hours of probation each year.
“He must replace a life in the community by giving back,” the attorney said. “Jail won’t do anything, he has to give back and make up for the incident.”
When asked to speak, Meyers apologized to the court and said that he “feels a deep loss” over the incident and though it was “very tragic and sad, it cannot be taken back.”
Judge Christopher Nye told Meyers that even though the 11 letters submitted on his behalf paint him as a “good guy,” he still committed a serious crime.
“You left (Nassar) in a gutter to die and this should be a defining moment for you,” he said.
Nye read a section of Meyers’ presentence investigation, where a state Department of Correction evaluator wrote that Meyers never expressed remorse or mentioned the impact to Nassar’s family, that he was more concerned with his own ability to move on and that he was disgruntled about how the media initially reported his case.
Nye sentenced Meyers to five years in prison, suspending that underlying sentence in lieu of up to a year’s sentence in a “rider” program, followed by a term of probation which depends on his successful completion of the program.
He warned Meyers that Meyers will serve his full prison sentence if he “messes up on the rider.”
He also sentenced Meyers to serve a concurrent year in jail on the misdemeanor manslaughter charge. Meyers will soon be evaluated by the Idaho Department of Correction and placed in a prison rehabilitation program best suited for him.
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Nampa man who fled the scene of fatal pedestrian crash gets up to year in prison program