Staff photo / Ed Runyan Gabrielle Hromada, 19, of Southington, left, gives a victim-impact statement during the sentencing hearing for Dennis E. Currey Jr., 24, of Eastland Avenue SE in Warren regarding the brain and other injuries Hromada suffered when Currey crashed into her car on state Route 11 in December 2024. At right is Trumbull County victim-witness advocate Raquel Zaebst.

WARREN — Dennis E. Currey Jr., 24, of Eastland Avenue SE, was sentenced to two years in prison and a driver’s license suspension Wednesday for a Dec. 26, 2024, drunken crash on state Route 11 in Liberty.

Currey pleaded guilty Feb. 12 to felony aggravated vehicular assault and drunken driving. He drove into the back of another car, causing both cars to go into the median. The crash left the other driver with a traumatic brain injury.

Currey gets credit for 86 days served in the Trumbull County jail awaiting trial. He was sentenced to a five-year driver’s license suspension.

Currey’s blood alcohol level was measured at 0.161, double the legal limit to drive in Ohio, according to the crash report. A “contributing circumstance” listed for Currey was “unsafe speed,” according to the crash report, though the report does not give an estimated speed Currey was traveling.

The report states that Currey was distracted by something “outside of the vehicle” but does not state what distracted him.

Currey was not wearing a seat belt. The victim in the other car was wearing a shoulder and lap belt. Currey hit the other car in the left northbound lane of Route 11 when Currey rear-ended another car also in the left lane in front of him. It was 10:30 p.m.

At Currey’s plea hearing, Trumbull County Assistant Prosecutor Mike Burnett said Currey struck the other vehicle from behind “at a high rate of speed.”

Currey, who grew a full beard while in the Trumbull County jail over nearly three months since his plea hearing in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, apologized during the hearing and said he prays for the victim every night.

But the most impactful part of the hearing was the victim-impact statement the victim, Gabrielle Hromada, 19, of Southington, gave to Judge Sean O’Brien before he handed down Currey’s sentence. Calling Currey a “selfish, irresponsible drunk driver,” she said the crash permanently changed her life.

She said that instead of driving home that night during her senior year of high school to “see my family and talk to my mom about our day … I found myself lying on the side of the highway, unable to breathe, drifting in and out of consciousness while Dennis Currey fled the scene.”

She said, “I struggle with calling that night an accident. To me it was not a car accident. There is a difference between accident and negligence. An accident is missing a stop sign or failing to see someone in your blind spot. What happened that night was not a momentary mistake. It was a result of deliberate reckless decisions,” she said, reading from prepared remarks.

“Choosing to drink and drive is not an accident. Choosing to excessively speed is not an accident. And choosing to drive without insurance is not an accident,” she said.

She suffered a “traumatic brain injury that has left me with severe neurological, physical and psychological impairments. This injury affects nearly every part of my daily life,” she said.

“My ability to think clearly, coordination, sense of touch, vision, hearing, memory, balance, communication and even my behavior, tasks that once felt automatic, now require intense concentration and effort,” she said.

She said neurologists tell her she now functions on 70% brain capacity. She said she was given an Individualized Education Program during the last months of her senior year of high school to help her graduate.

“While my classmates were planning their future, I had to cope with a brain that no longer worked the way it once did,” she said.

She said one of the worst moments after the crash was when a neurologist advised her to monitor her emotions because patients with brain injuries like hers “often become extremely suicidal starting in their early 30s.”

She has “endured intense, exhausting rounds of physical therapy, fighting to regain even a small piece of the person I used to be,” she said. The physical pain was unbearable, but the emotional and psychological pain was worse, she said.

“I live with constant anxiety when I am in a car, whether I am driving or sitting in the passenger seat.” She said she is “haunted by memories of that night.”

The crash produced more than $80,000 in medical bills. At the time of the crash, she had just earned a full-ride scholarship to play softball in college and had enrolled for her classes that fall.

“My lifelong dreams have been jeopardized,” she said.

Currey’s attorney, Roger Bauer, noted that Currey has no other serious criminal record and that Hromada was treated and released from the hospital the night of the crash.

Currey apologized for his actions, saying about the victim, “I pray for her every night, and I pray that she gets better every day. I’ve done it ever since the accident.”

O’Brien noted that Currey did have one misdemeanor making-false-alarms conviction in his background. But he said Currey’s parents did bring Currey back to the scene after the crash. O’Brien said the restitution to the victim is not yet resolved and will most likely be a “civil matter.”

After the hearing, Hromada’s mother, Teah Hromada, was asked about her daughter being released from the hospital the night of the crash. She said emergency room doctors “just treat you, make sure you’re OK and send you on your way to go see more specialists.”

She said at the point a person goes to the emergency room, the person is “so beat up and bruised, you don’t know what is wrong with you” until further testing.

“And once you fix one problem, you find out you have 10 more,” Gabrielle Hromada said. She went through both physical therapy and brain therapy, she said.