Paul P. Ivkovich drank so much his blood-alcohol level was about three times the legal limit when he got in his car with his girlfriend, Sharon Crawford, on April 30, 2015. Minutes later, the former University of Dayton basketball strength and conditioning coach had crashed his car and Crawford was dead.
“There is not a single day that passes that I don’t replay that Wednesday night in my mind and identify all the things I could have done differently,” Ivkovich said Tuesday. “There is not a single day that passes where I am not buried in an avalanche of pain and regret for being the person responsible for the loss of the woman we all loved and adored.”
Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Timothy O’Connell sentenced Ivkovich, 37, to four years in prison for aggravated vehicular homicide of Crawford, 48.
Ivkovich had pleaded no contest last month to aggravated vehicular homicide. He had a blood-alcohol limit of .227 — nearly three times the .08 legal limit — when he was driving westbound on East Third Street in Dayton and lost control of his vehicle.
Ivkovich’s car struck a concrete pillar under a train trestle near Webster Street. Crawford, 48, was pronounced dead at 2:58 a.m. at Miami Valley Hospital from multiple blunt force traumas. Ivkovich and Crawford had been drinking at two bars and left at closing time around 2 a.m.
“My mother can be described as one of the most beautiful souls one could know,” said Kristen Donahue, the eldest daughter of Crawford’s four children, also known as Sharon Shockey. “She always had a contagious spirit full of love, laughter and joy.”
Judge O’Connell had a sentencing range from 2 to 8 years. Crawford’s oldest daughter asked for four years.
“We were robbed of the most important person in our lives that night,” Donahue said. “We were given a lifetime sentence of feeling incomplete.”
Crawford’s sister — an area law enforcement officer — forgave Ivkovich and wished there was a sentence that included no incarceration.
“I am not angry with Paul and I understand that this may be hard for some people to understand,” Crawford’s sister said. “I am also able to acknowledge his pain, and I believe it is real and it is a heavy burden for him.”
Speaking before sentencing, Ivkovich said,“Nothing I do the rest of my life will ever make up for what I have done to all of you.”
Defense attorney Anthony Cicero declined to speak on behalf of his client beyond the sentencing memorandum in which he wrote “there can be no good-faith challenge to the depths with which Paul experiences remorse” and included numerous letters of support from Ivkovich’s family and friends.
Prosecutor Robert Deschler advocated for a sentence longer than two years.
“It was an appropriate sentence in this case,” Deschler said. “We had argued that the defendant did not deserve the minimum sentence.”
In his sentencing memo, Deschler wrote that prosecutors think the only reason Ivkovich stopped drinking was that the bar was closing and he had to leave.
“He put the life of his passenger at risk, his own life at risk, and also other people out on the street at risk,” Deschler said. “By nature of his victim’s relationship with him, she was really put in a position where she trusted him.”
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