Lisa Hyatt was baking cookies for an upcoming soccer game on Sept. 30, 2018, when she heard the sound of multiple sirens passing her home on the North Shore.
“I thought to myself, ‘That one sounds really bad,’ and … I said a little prayer for the family, whosever sirens those were for,” she said while weeping during the sentencing of Jeremy Lee, the drunken driver who killed her 76-year-old father, Dr. Eugene Chin, a prominent Oahu physician. “I didn’t know it was going to be for my own.”
Lee sat silently in the courtroom Thursday as
1st Circuit Court Judge Karen Nakasone sentenced him to 10 years in prison for the deadly hit-and-run of the doctor, who was on a morning walk with his dog, Lily, on the shoulder of Farrington Highway near Dillingham Airfield. Chin died
at the scene, while Lee, who was 39 at the time, fled and was later arrested around Sand Island.
“We had to wait until you were arrested. You didn’t turn yourself in; you ran away,” she told Lee during the sentencing. “You finally couldn’t hide anymore.”
The judge sentenced Lee to 10 years in prison for each count, first-degree negligent homicide and an accident involving death or serious bodily injury, but they will run concurrently.
Hyatt and her mother,
Susanne, Chin’s wife of
50 years, spoke about the heartache and loss that they endured right before the holidays.
“He loved … his family more than anything else.
He was looking forward to Christmas for everyone
to come home. He had already planned the meal,” Hyatt said. “We’ll have
another set of holidays without him. You stole
the life of an amazing
person.”
She added that the trial was especially difficult.
“Going through the trial, seeing the video of his body flying through the air, seeing the video of how staggering drunk you were, is just horrific,” she said.
Susanne Chin rebuked the court for earlier denying a request to use Kaulana’s Law, which could have doubled Lee’s prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. The law, which allows courts to extend the maximum penalty for such crimes to 20 years, is named after hit-and-run victim Kaulana Werner, who was killed in 2016.
“The recent decision to not uphold Kaulana’s Law, which mandated additional time for fleeing the scene of a deadly accident, signals … that no matter who you kill or who you maim, you are redeemable in the face of the law, and reinforces the belief of many that this legal system is inherently unfair,” Chin said.
Lee declined to speak at the sentencing, which Chin later said was disappointing.
“You’ve not uttered one syllable of remorse or sorrow,” she told Lee. “You deserve the same chances that you gave my husband when you struck him on the side of the road and drove off, leaving him to bleed to death and die alone.”
She added, “I am still trying to navigate the dark grief that comes when the pain of death ends a life unfairly. Gene was my husband, my partner and my better half for 50 years. You killed two people that day.”