Dr. Yurich will serve 10 days in jail

YOUNGSTOWN

Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court sentenced Dr. Joseph Yurich to 12 months in jail with all but 10 days suspended for his role in the fatal Berlin Reservoir boat crash on May 9, 2015 that left one man injured and another man dead.

Dr. Yurich will be on house arrest for 90 days and serve 200 hours of community service. Following that, he will be on probation for five years.

He also received a one year driver’s license suspension with working privileges after 45 days.

Last week, Dr. Yurich was convicted of vehicular homicide and failure to stop after an accident after Judge Durkin ruled that Dr. Yurich’s negligence led to the death of Neal Cuppett, 58, of Akron.

Both offenses are first-degree misdemeanors that carry up to six months in jail. The failure to stop sentence must be served consecutively to other sentences.

Dr. Yurich was indicted for aggravated vehicular homicide while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, which has a mandatory prison sentence of two to eight years. The prosecution, however, failed to convince the court that he was impaired the night of the accident.

Law requires prosecutors to prove a defendant showed obvious signs of impairment as a result of alcohol consumption.

Witnesses did not report seeing Dr. Yurich staggering or slurring his speech.

Last year, Judge John M. Durkin ruled that blood and alcohol samples taken from Dr. Yurich the night of the crash were inadmissible because they were not properly refrigerated according to Ohio law.

Those samples recorded a blood-alcohol level of .152, nearly two times the legal limit of .08, a toxicologist reported.