Inset top, left to right: Luke Soposki, Logan Soposki, Lynnea Soposki (Dimbleby Funeral Homes). Inset bottom: Modou Ngom (Delaware County (Ohio) Jail).
An Ohio truck driver who was playing with a tablet when he barreled into the vehicles in front of him, causing a chain-reaction crash and killing a family of three, is heading to prison.
Modou Ngom, 51, was sentenced by Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge Marianne Hemmeter to 22 1/2 years in prison, the maximum possible penalty, after he was found guilty of three counts of aggravated vehicular homicide in the deaths of 37-year-old Luke Soposki, 36-year-old Lynnea Soposki and 1-year-old Logan Soposki, the Delaware County Prosecutor”s Office announced.
The defendant was also found guilty of five counts of vehicular assault following his four-day trial in September.
On the morning of April 11, Ngom was driving a 2006 Freightliner on Interstate 71 in Delaware County, in the central part of the state, just north of Columbus. According to a civil lawsuit filed against him by one of the surviving victims, traffic had stalled, but as the vehicles in front of him slowed down, Ngom continued “at a high rate of speed.”
The trucker crashed into the back of a vehicle, “causing a chain-reaction crash that involved 9 vehicles in total,” Delaware County prosecutor Melissa Schiffel detailed after his sentencing.
Traffic video showed Ngom’s white semitruck crashing into the cars, with at least one of them bursting into flames instantly, local CBS affiliate WBNS reported. The semitruck then drove into the median, pushing two other vehicles.
Luke Soposki, Lynnea Soposki and their son, Logan, were killed, and five other people in the wreck “sustained serious injuries requiring medical assistance.”
The injured woman who filed the civil lawsuit said she suffered “permanent and substantial physical deformity, loss of use of a limb, loss of a bodily organ system, and a physical functional injury that prevents her from being able to independently care for herself and perform life-sustaining activities.” That case has not yet been resolved.
The Soposki family estate also filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Ngom, which is ongoing.
Hemmeter, the presiding judge in Ngom’s criminal case, excoriated the defendant during his sentencing hearing.
“You wiped out an entire family,” Hemmeter said, per area NBC affiliate WCMH. “The effects of that will be lifelong, life alerting and life changing. And this court can’t make it better.”
Lynnea Soposki’s brother gave a victim impact statement, during which he suggested a reason for Ngom’s crash.
“You were playing with a damn tablet while aiming a 40-ton weapon straight at” the victims, he reportedly said. “Your poor family is pouring their hearts out, awash with remorse and I haven’t seen an ounce from you — have you no shame for what you did?”
The civil lawsuit filed by the woman injured in the crash is scheduled to continue on Dec. 18.
