PANAMA CITY — A Panama City trucker was sentenced to more than nine years behind bars Monday after he pleaded no contest to a count of vehicular homicide for driving his semitruck into the back of a moving Jeep.
Judge Michael Overstreet sentenced Dennis Fuller, 44, to nine years and three months in prison, and his driver’s license will be revoked for three years after he’s released. Fuller pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter; the state didn’t pursue additional charges of DUI manslaughter and DUI with serious bodily injury.
Analysts with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found methamphetamine and marijuana in a sample of Fuller’s blood drawn after the March 19, 2012, crash on U.S. 98 west of Mexico Beach. The crash killed Chris Herudzinksi and sent Dana Becker and Jadwiga Stojkowski to the hospital with serious injuries.
But attorney Waylon Graham, who represented Fuller, said those analysts could not testify that the levels of drugs in his blood were high enough to have caused Fuller to have been impaired at the time of the crash.
“I honed in on the experts concerning the drugs, and basically they were kind of shaky,” Graham said.
That hurt the state’s case on the two DUI counts, but eyewitnesses who said Fuller was driving very dangerously before the crash strengthened the state’s vehicular homicide case, said prosecutor Bob Sombathy.
“We had some good witnesses who said this guy was driving all over the road,” Sombathy said.
Fuller was weaving off the road and back on again at high speeds and attempting to pass other vehicles in dangerous circumstances before he smashed into the back of an eastbound Jeep. Becker and Stokowski were in the two front seats, and Herudzinski became entrapped in the back seat.
“To quote the witnesses, his driving was ‘horrible,’ ” Graham said.
Because the conviction was not for DUI but for vehicular homicide, Fuller still will be of working age when he’s released, so the fact that he will be eligible for a driver’s license was a small victory, Graham said.
“In the end, based on all the evidence, it was a very fair plea,” Graham said.
The three victims were from out of state and didn’t attend the sentencing hearing Monday, Sombathy said.