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Daughter of Cold Stone founders gets prison
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The daughter of Cold Stone Creamery's founders was sentenced Thursday to 3 1/2 years in prison for a fatal drunken-driving crash.
Woman agrees to prison term for fatal DUI crash
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge also punished Savannah Sutherland, 23, of Mesa with five years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service. She had pleaded guilty to manslaughter, criminal damage and driving while intoxicated.
On March 20, 2006, Sutherland rear-ended a scooter driven by Genovena Tepec-Juarez, 36, in east Mesa near the intersection of Baseline Road and Farnsworth Drive.
In a turn of events that Judge Andrew Klein called very remarkable, the victim's family intervened so Sutherland would receive a shorter prison term than what was outlined in a plea agreement reached two months ago.
Under that deal with prosecutors, she would've received five years for manslaughter.
But as Tepec-Juarez's nephew Nestor Valle explained, through an interpreter: "We ask for more community service, so other people don't have to go through what we're going through. It will serve as a lesson for her and for the people she'll reach out to."
Before Klein handed down his sentence, an emotional Sutherland read a statement in which she took full responsibility for killing Tepec-Juarez.
"I promise that for the rest of my life, I will try to make up for the tragedy I caused," she said. "And I hope to have the wisdom and strength to persuade others to avoid the mistakes I have made."
Those mistakes were drinking four beers at a bar and driving away, as Sutherland later confessed to police. Her blood-alcohol content was recorded at 0.194, more than twice the legal limit.
When Sutherland's 2003 Chevy Cavalier struck the scooter, the impact threw Tepec into the windshield
Up until the sentencing, Sutherland was under house arrest and the 24-hour supervision of her parents, Donald and Susan Sutherland, founders of the Scottsdale-based chain of ice cream stores.
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