YOUNGSTOWN — Michael Cefalde III told visiting judge Judge Thomas Pokorny on Wednesday the best word to describe the loss of his daughter, Kaitlyn R. Cefalde, a year ago in a crash is “immeasurable. That loss to me hit so hard, and every day we relive her loss.”

He said, “Before I go to bed and pray at night that I hope it’s a bad dream, a nightmare, that we’ll get up and this will all be over. Unfortunately that is not the case.”

Cefalde and others made remarks in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court before Pokorny sentenced Jaquan M. Jenkins, 23, of Youngstown, to serve 10 to 13 1/2 years in prison for driving the car at high speed while fleeing from police and crashing the car containing Kaitlyn Cefalde, who died from injuries sustained in the crash.

Jenkins also was sentenced to a lifetime driver’s license suspension.

The crash took place Dec. 1 on Mahoning Avenue on Youngstown’s West Side. Jenkins had been pulled over by Austintown police near the Marc’s store on Mahoning Avenue in the township after police were called by Kaitlyn Cefalde’s mother to report a possible domestic situation between Cefalde and Jenkins at the Westchester Square apartments.

Austintown police spotted the Cadillac Jenkins was driving exiting the apartment complex and pulled him over in a traffic stop near the Marc’s store. A police report stated Jenkins and Cefalde seemed calm and did not appear to have any injuries.

Dispatch told officers Jenkins had warrants for his arrest, so police told him to turn off the car. Instead, Jenkins sped off, police said. Police tried to follow the car, which ran a red light at Mahoning Avenue and Raccoon Road, then the officers lost sight of the vehicle, the report states.

Other officers were near Wickliffe Circle, where the Austintown Christmas tree lighting was happening at that time. Officers tried to use stop sticks at that location, but they did not stop the car.

At that point, a lieutenant called off the chase. Soon after, at 7:38 p.m. Austintown officers were notified by Youngstown police about the crash as the Cadillac approached South Bon Air Avenue at high speed. Jenkins lost control and veered off the road.

The Cadillac hit a sign and mailbox, causing it to separate into two halves. The rear half struck a building and stopped against a wall. The front half began spinning, resting against the curb of a parking lot on Rhoda Avenue.

Jenkins and Cefalde were injured. Cefalde died the next day in the hospital.

Michael Cefalde said he he thinks about “being a young man when I had my daughter and how she shaped me into the man I am today. She was my best friend, and that love for a daughter, for a son, will be something you can never relive. It’s just unbelievable the love I have for that young lady and how we grew over the years together.”

He added, “When her little brother was born, how she just brought him into our family and embraced him. It will be hard to never get to walk Kaitlyn down the aisle, not to hold her child, my grandchild.”

Kaitlyn’s mother, Kristina Henik, said it’s hard to imagine how they went from spending time with Kaitlyn last Thanksgiving “to one week later, Dec. 1, surrounding her in the surgical intensive care unit at St. E’s listening to the doctor explain the impact of her head injuries are fatal, praying for a miracle to save her life.

“That was not our daughter laying there, brain dead, no smile, no laugh, no spunk,” she said. “Her father and I will forever recall the pain of walking down that cold hospital hallway to the operating room the next morning, where we sat with her until her heart stopped beating. For what? Why? These are things we can’t answer.”

She said the crash that killed her daughter was “no accident.” She said there was “only deliberate, selfish, violent actions of one person. And if not for his actions, we wouldn’t be here today.”

She said the family had “never met” Jenkins, “a stranger to our family.”

Prosecutors say Jenkins left the hospital and was on the loose for eight months. The U.S. Marshals Service asked for the the public’s help to find Jenkins. Marshals eventually located him Aug. 15 hiding under a tarp and blanket in the basement of a home on Upton Avenue and took him into custody.

He had been secretly indicted March 30, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He pleaded guilty in October to involuntary manslaughter and failure to comply with the order of a police officer in a plea agreement.

Michael Cefalde said after the hearing that his daughter and Jenkins may have been friends, but reports calling Jenkins Kaitlyn’s boyfriend would not be accurate for someone her family had never met.

Henik told Judge Pokorny, who was filling in for Judge R. Scott Krichbaum, that Kaitlyn “is loved dearly and missed by so many. The ripple effect of this tragedy is relentless. It is everlasting, and I will never again receive a call from her ‘Hey, Mom. What’s going on this weekend? What are we doing with the kids? Where are we going?’

“Never again will she be there to cheer her siblings on at the ballfields, to be in a family photo. Sunday afternoon visits that took place in the living room and around the dinner table now happen at the cemetery.”

Jenkins spoke to the judge, saying Kaitlyn’s was “my best friend” and apologized to her family.