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Woman gets seven years in pedestrian death
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Robert Boak’s son still has memories of his dad and keeps some handy when he’s having a bad day, his grandmother said Tuesday at a sentencing hearing for the woman accused of killing her son, Boak, in a drunken- driving accident.
Christine Miller said the 51/2-year-old son of Boak refuses to allow anyone to wash his father’s clothes, and when he needs to, he clings to them for comfort and opens the storage bags they are kept in, she told Visiting Judge Thomas Pokorny in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on Tuesday before he sentenced 57-year-old Barbara Pusser to seven years in prison for the accident that caused the death of Miller’s son.
“When he’s sad, he likes to open the Ziploc bags and smell Dad,” Miller said.
Miller spoke at the hearing for Pusser of Arden Boulevard, who pleaded guilty in March to charges of aggravated vehicular homicide, tampering with records and forgery in the Aug. 13, 2012, crash that killed Boak, 33, of Austintown.
Pusser is accused of driving drunk and striking Boak as he was walking along Midlothian Boulevard just west of Lake Park Road about 11:30 p.m.
Another vehicle driven by a Boardman man then struck Boak. Boak later died at St. Elizabeth Health Center.
Police said Pusser gave police another identity at the scene of the accident.
She received a three-year sentence on the aggravated vehicular homicide charge, three years for the obstruction of justice charge and a year for the forgery charge. Aggravated circumstances were attached to the vehicular- homicide charge because she was driving drunk.
Miller said she and her husband also feel guilty because her son was walking that night and he did not have transportation.
“Perhaps he wouldn’t have been there that night,” Miller said. “Perhaps if we had provided transportation, he would have been safer.”
Miller said Boak’s son talks of his dad every day and speaks of him in the present tense.
Pusser sobbed as Miller spoke. “I’m sorry for everything that happened,” Pusser said. “I know how it feels to lose someone.” Judge Pokorny said that Pusser’s case is all too common of someone who has a minimal criminal record or no criminal record who gets in serious trouble because of alcohol.
Court records show Pusser had a previous DUI offense in 1997 in Mahoning County.