Staff photos / Ed Runyan Jayce Klink, center, is handcuffed at the end of her sentencing hearing Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. She received a one-year prison sentence for driving the wrong way on Interstate 680, hitting another car head-on and killing one woman. At right is her attorney, Lou DeFabio.

YOUNGSTOWN — Prosecutors recommended that Jayce R. Klink receive prison time for killing one woman and badly injuring another in a 2020 wrong-way crash on Interstate 680.

Judge Anthony Donofrio of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court agreed, sentencing Klink, 24, of South Avenue, Poland, to one year in prison. He also suspended her driver’s license for five years.

Klink was led away in handcuffs to begin serving the sentence.

During the sentencing hearing Wednesday, Sharenda Whatley, 34, of Youngstown, who survived the crash but suffered fractures and a head injury and lost her sister, Tiara Whatley, 35, also of Youngstown, said her family did not tell her Tiara had died until two days before the funeral. Sharenda said they kept it from her because of her own blood-pressure issues.

She spent a couple of months in a nursing home recuperating.

“I was robbed of seeing her,” Sharenda said of Tiara. “Girl, I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her, nothing.”

Sharenda frequently got emotional during her remarks. “My sister, my older sister, she just became an LPN, something she always dreamed of.”

She called Tiara “such a beautiful soul, gone way too soon. She was robbed of her future.”

Tiara was the mother of four children.

Sharenda asked that Klink get prison — or else something like this “will happen again.” She said the accident “tore my whole family apart.”

DEFENDANT SPEAKS

When Klink had the chance to speak, she said, she wakes up every day thinking about the crash.

“I wish I could go back somehow and change the outcome of that night, and I wish I could take away this family’s pain and suffering, and I wish there were words I could say that would make any of this better. And I know that there is not.” She said she wants to “learn from this horrible mistake.”

Youngstown police said the crash took place at 9:44 p.m. Dec. 2, 2020, when Klink traveled the wrong way a couple of blocks down Marshall Street just west of downtown, then entered the northbound I-680 exit ramp off Marshall.

She traveled only a short distance onto I-680 North in the wrong direction before she encountered vehicles coming at her. A witness said he saw Klink swerve to avoid two cars but hit the third one — the Whatley vehicle. Both cars sustained heavy front-end damage, a Youngstown police report states.

Klink pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide, a third-degree felony; and aggravated vehicular assault, a fourth-degree felony; and could have gotten up to 4 1/2 years in prison.

SERIOUSNESS

Marty Hume, assistant county prosecutor, said Klink’s plea agreement called for prosecutors to recommend a “period of incarceration based upon the seriousness of the events,” but her attorney, Lou DeFabio, was able to argue for a lesser sentence.

“The state’s position is that this is an extremely serious form of the offense, obviously, a deceased victim. You can’t get any more serious than that,” Hume said. Sharenda Whatley “is also permanently injured as a result of this accident,” Hume said.

Before announcing the sentence, Donofrio said the aggravated vehicular homicide charge considers Klink’s offense to be the result of recklessness.

“I understand that your actions were a mistake, but they were the most serious mistake that ended in horrible consequences,” the judge said. “There was a witness who saw your vehicle drive around two other vehicles before crashing into the victims’ vehicle. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just pull over to avoid hitting other vehicles.”

The judge said a presentence report of Klink’s criminal and personal history indicates a low risk that she will re-offend.

DeFabio told the judge Klink “has no criminal history, not a a juvenile, not as an adult.”

DeFabio said everyone seems to agree that this crash was an “accident,” adding that “her choice that night was to drive home. It was night time. She got on 680 that I’ve passed through a thousand times. It’s dark down there. It’s not well marked.”

He said she was not driving fast and “had no history of being a reckless driver.” She is the custodial parent for her “young son,” DeFabio said. He said all of the factors weigh in favor of Klink getting probation except that someone died and someone was injured. “Accidents happen in the blink of an eye” he said.

‘HERE TODAY, GONE TODAY’

Kenneth Whatley, father of Tiara and Sharenda, said a woman named Cindy stopped that night to help his daughters despite lots of other cars passing by.

“She held Tiara’s hand and told her to stay calm. It’s going to be all right. And Sharenda looked over at Tiara and told her, ‘Get up. Get up, Tiara.’ And Tiara looked at her and she closed her eyes.”

Whatley said he had come to Youngstown from his home in Columbus for the funeral of a nephew that morning and was headed back home when he got a call from the girls’ mother, telling him there had been a bad accident.

He said there is an expression, “Here today, gone today, and sure enough that was the truth. I had just seen them that day back home, and hours later I get a call. What I ask of you judge is justice. It’s been grueling, hard, hard months, years, over the situation.”

He said holidays are not the same because Tiara is missing: “I look at the grandchildren, and they hurt.”

As Sharenda and Tiara’ Whatley’s mother, Tyra Whatley, left the courtroom, she summed up the tragedy of her family’s loss and the crying of Klink as she was sentenced and taken away in handcuffs by saying, “A lot of families were destroyed by this.”

erunyan@vindy.com