WARREN COUNTY — An appeals court has upheld the conviction of a man accused of causing a deadly crash in Warren County in 2023.
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Samuel Sperry, 28, of Cincinnati, was found guilty of aggravated vehicular homicide, aggravated vehicular assault, and several other charges for a crash that killed 76-year-old Shirley Coletta. His conviction was affirmed by the Twelfth District Court of Appeals, Warren County Prosecutor David P. Fornshell announced on Tuesday.
Sperry was found to have been driving at 124 miles per hour on Interstate 71 in Deerfield Township with high levels of marijuana in his system when he collided with Coletta’s vehicle.
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Coletta was killed in the crash and her passenger was seriously injured.
The trial court sentenced Sperry to an aggregate prison term of 9-12 years and imposed a lifetime driver’s license suspension.
“This is yet another case where Ohio law is too lenient when it comes to sentencing high-speed and impaired drivers who kill or seriously injure innocent citizens who are just living their lives, driving down the road, completely unaware that their lives are about to end, or at ‘best’, be forever changed by the actions of someone who chooses to be reckless,” Fornshell said.
Fornshell went on to say he was grateful to the judges in the appeals court who “saw through Sperry’s meritless arguments.”
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