Drunk driving in fatal Memorial Day motorcycle crash nets 5 years

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) – There is a number in Phillip Markey’s cell phone that he desperately would like to get in touch with.

Regardless of whether it is excellent occasions or undesirable, Markey generally scrolls down to the identify, glancing at it, pondering what that male who he called his most effective good friend would notify him.

What guidance would he give? What encouragement would he convey to him?

What would his cousin’s voice seem like all over again?

“I obtain myself at family gatherings, looking at all people, and I want to lean to him and talk to, ‘Did you see that?’” mentioned Markey all through a hearing Friday in Allen Remarkable Court docket.

“He’s not there.”

An Allen Remarkable Court Decide sentenced the guy who induced a 2020 Memorial Working day crash that killed 27-calendar year-previous James Markey to 5 decades in prison at the conclude of that hearing, but the wounds on the Markey spouse and children will very likely remain for significantly longer.

“Because of a drunk driver that’s in which we commit our holiday seasons – at a cemetery,” said April Markey, James Markey’s sister.

Decide M. Zent sentenced 69-calendar year-previous Dean Hazelett to 6 many years in jail and purchased five of people to be used driving bars. He purchased Hazelett to serve the other year on probation, pay much more than $11,000 in restitution and barred him for driving for six yrs.

Hazelett turned in entrance of Markey, who was using a motorbike, at the intersection of Spring Road and Rumsey Avenue at about 7:15 p.m. that Memorial Working day virtually two decades in the past.

Investigators discovered that Hazelett had a blood-liquor-articles of .13 % – properly over the .08 restrict – and that witnesses explained he was at fault for the crash, in accordance to court paperwork.

Hazelett admitted to ingesting at a community strip club prior to the crash.

Allen County prosecutors in the beginning charged him with triggering demise when functioning a motor auto though intoxicated and reckless murder, but dropped the drunk driving demand as component of a plea settlement.

Markey did not die appropriate absent from his injuries.

He was taken to a nearby medical center in which April Markey was allowed to see him for basically 10 minutes just to recognize him. Thanks to COVID-19 fears at the time, visitation at the medical center was seriously restricted.

The spouse and children remained in the parking whole lot for hrs.

He died a day afterwards.

“I continue to bear in mind the very last day with him,” April Markey wrote in her letter. “Memorial Day 2020. We rode motorcycles, we went shooting and swimming. I was a best working day. And then I bought a telephone phone.”

Hazelett apologized to the family and supplied his condolences prior to becoming remanded into custody.

It is his to start with criminal offense, which may well have saved him from serving all six several years.

“That’s extremely exceptional,” Zent informed Hazelett. “That’s significant to me.”

But, Zent additional, someone who drives drunk and finishes up in his court docket ordinarily goes to prison.