WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA) -- Even people who have watched dozens of harrowing trials say this was a tough one.
There were tears on both sides as a DC Superior Court judge Monday sentenced a young mother to spend three years and four months in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
Chamica Adams was driving drunk when she careened into a crowd of graduate students in Adams Morgan last fall, killing a young Austrian woman with big dreams.
Julia Bachleitner was a student at Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies looking at conflict resolution and how to end wars. She was celebrating the start of classes with friends last fall when Chamica Adams ran her down. She died six days later after doctors took her off life support.
You can get a sense from the scene just how horrible the crash was. But Julia Bachleitner's mother says pictures cannot convey how devastating it was to fly from Austria to find her broken daughter on life support.
She flew back from Austria a second time to tell the judge no sentence will let her look again at her daughter's bright, shining eyes...no sentence will give Julia's twin back the other half of her life. "I'm Julia's mother, and nobody gives back my child. I've lost a child, and there is nothing we can do with her. And so I leave to a life without her. And it will be very hard."
Chamica Adams had just finished an all-you-can-drink happy hour at the District Bar. Her lawyer says her last drink was a Green Zombie, a mixture of Blue Curacao and 190 proof grain alcohol.
Police say her blood alcohol was twice the legal limit when she plowed into the graduate students at 18th Street and Florida.
Julia's boyfriend says in his nightmares, he still feels the wind from Adams' car as it crushed the love of his life, who was standing right next to him.
But Chamica Adams lawyer told the judge it was all a mistake... that Adams had been abandoned by her designated driver...and was just trying to get home to her five-year-old son in Mitchellville.
"She grieves for Julia," James Rudasill, Jr. told reporters. "And I want the family to know that. She grieves for Julia. She really does. That's for real, that's not pretend," he said with tears in his eyes and his voice choking.
Chamica Adams wept as she told Julia Bachleitner's family how sorry she is -- how every time she misses her young son, she thinks also about how much they must miss Julia.
The judge sentenced her to eight years, but he suspended all but that three years and four months. She'll also have to complete 500 hours of community service on a project chosen by the Bachleitner family.
The 72 months that's hanging over her head if she fails to complete her probation is toward the top end of the guidelines.
But the 40 months she's likely to do is almost at the bottom.
By the way, the Bachleitner family has just filed a $20 million lawsuit against Chamica Adams, her mother, and the bar that served her.
Written by Bruce Leshan
9News Now & wusa9.com