Lynn driver in crash gets nine months in jail

PEABODY – A judge ordered a Lynn woman to spend nine months in jail for a 2012 crash that killed a young city man and seriously injured his twin brother as the two walked home from a convenience store.”The only good that I can see coming from this nightmare is that it sends a clear message to all motorists: pedestrians have the right of way,” Gerry McManus, the father of the twins, said in an impact statement at a sentencing hearing on Thursday. “Therefore, when practiced, courtesy toward pedestrians, and each other, saves lives just as the law intends.”McManus left immediately after delivering his statement, not awaiting the judge’s sentence.Angela Okonkwo, 38, of 339 Linwood St., Lynn, was convicted Monday of motor-vehicle homicide by negligent operation in connection with a September 2012 accident in Austin Square in which Riley McManus, 22, was seriously injured and his twin, Dillon McManus, was killed. Okonkwo was also charged with a civil infraction of a crosswalk violation.The trial was held in Peabody District Court.Riley and Dillon McManus walked to the 7-Eleven in Austin Square across from their family home on Boston Street on Sept. 18, 2012. It was a trip the brothers took many times, and always using the crosswalks that start from just outside their home’s side door, Riley McManus testified during the trial.But as the twins walked home across Boston Street at approximately 11 p.m., a Hummer driven by Okonkwo struck them. Okonkwo pulled over immediately and called police, reporting the crash. Gerry McManus came outside to see what had happened, not knowing the victims were his sons.Essex Assistant District Attorney Erin Bellavia told the jury an investigation of the crash and the conditions at the time of the incident revealed Okonkwo needed two seconds to see and react to the presence of the twins in the crosswalk. But nearly seven seconds elapsed between the time the twins entered the crosswalk and the crash, the investigation concluded.A jury returned a guilty verdict Monday after 10 minutes of deliberation.At sentencing Thursday, Bellavia requested Okonkwo be sentenced to 2 ? years in a house of corrections, 18 months to be served and the balance suspended for six years, a mandatory 15-year loss of license and 100 hours community service. She said the McManus family was conflicted on the sentence, with Gerry and Riley McManus wanting some jail time and Colleen McManus urging that Okonkwo not be incarcerated.Defense attorney Mark Miliotis, several members of Okonkwo’s family and Okonkwo herself asked that no jail time be imposed. About 35 members of Okonkwo’s friends and family attended the sentencing, with three of her six kids joining others to speak on her behalf and apologize to the McManus family.”I honestly, if I could take back Sept. 18, since that day, I always think what I could have done. The only thing I could have done was not to go to work,” Okonkwo said through tears. It was the first time she spoke during the trial. “I was screaming for help, was screaming for somebody to help me … I was there, praying to God for somebody to be helping.”Okonkwo said she had wanted to talk to and apologize to the McManus family many times since the accident, sometimes starting to walk toward the family’s home to speak with the twins’ mother and check on the family. But her attorneys had advised against it.”Please just don’t take me away, my children don’t have anywhere to go,” Okonkwo said.Judge Dominic Paratore said determining an appropriate sentence was difficult. He said he had mental images of the twins smiling in a photograph and of Gerry McManus coming outside and finding his sons seriously injured. Paratore also said he had an image of Okonkwo who “did nothing that night intentionally … did nothing that night to intentionally hurt somebody.”Paratore sentenced Okonkwo to 18 months in a house of corrections, 9 months to be served and with the balance suspended for 5 years. He also imposed 200 hours of comm