Laurie Campbell wants to forgive James Wel for what the 41-year-old Lincoln man took from her family.
But at Wel's sentencing hearing Friday — more than a year after his car struck Russell Boardman, an 83-year-old pedestrian who died of the injuries he suffered — Campbell wasn't yet ready to administer absolution, she said.
"It's been a long year," she told Judge Joseph Dalton. "A lot of therapy; grief therapy for me. I'm still trying to find the grace in my heart."
Then Campbell, one of two daughters Boardman left behind, turned away from the judge and toward Wel, who a jury found guilty of motor vehicle homicide in Boardman's death following a trial last month.
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"Mr. Wel, I am Russell George Boardman's youngest daughter and what I would like to say to you is that I not only know what you may have been struggling with as the individual that hit my father, but there was a whole other side that this has affected," she said, minutes before Dalton sentenced Wel to probation.
"I hope you understand the effect that it has had not only on my father's siblings, his daughters, his grandchildren," she said, her voice breaking. "It was also something that didn't have to happen. It just didn't have to."Â
Campbell's address Friday came a year and a day after her father's death, which followed a nearly two-month hospital stay in the aftermath of the Jan. 8, 2022, crash. Boardman died Feb. 23.
He was crossing South Street in a marked crosswalk with his arms full of groceries when Wel, driving a Chevy Equinox, struck Boardman near the road's intersection with 15th Street in what prosecutors described Friday as a "tragic" accident.
Wel told the officer at the scene — and the jury last month — that he stepped on the brakes to try to stop, but he couldn't in time.
He wasn't under the influence of drugs or alcohol or driving distracted when his car struck Boardman in a marked crosswalk, police said in the crash report.
And Wel's attorney, Matt Kosmicki, argued at the trial that there wasn't any evidence Wel had been driving carelessly or negligently. The sky was dark. Boardman was wearing dark clothes and crossed without looking for cars, he said.
"Sometimes people can use all care that is expected of them and an accident still happens," Kosmicki said then.
Deputy County Attorney James Morris said Friday that all sides had acknowledged the deadly crash was unintentional and that there was no indication Wel had been driving "egregiously (or) horribly."
"We've all seen those cases," Morris said. "I think we all agree this isn't one of those cases.
"But at the end of the day, Mr. Boardman did everything right. He was in the crosswalk as he was supposed to be. And, unfortunately, Mr. Wel struck him and killed him."
Kosmicki, who noted that the Department of Motor Vehicles would revoke Wel's license for six months regardless of the judge's sentence because of the Class 1 misdemeanor violation, asked Dalton for leniency, but requested no specific sentence on behalf of Wel, who declined to address the court.
In his ruling, Dalton seemed to try to strike a balance between penalty and sympathy, eschewing jail time but sentencing Wel to two years of probation and a $1,000 fine — the maximum probation period and monetary punishment allowed by law.
Dalton also ordered Wel to attend a victim impact panel, take a driver's safety course and complete 80 total hours of community service during Boardman's birth and death months over the next two years.
And the judge urged Wel to take to heart Campbell's earlier address, imploring him to consider the "palpable" hurt the crash brought Boardman's family and to be cognizant of his surroundings every time he drives.
"This accident did not need to happen, sir," the judge said.