Jeremy Lane was sentenced Monday to serve seven years in prison for the traffic death of Unum employee Susan Wood.
Lane, 26, did not testify at the sentencing hearing conducted by Judge Don Poole.
He will be eligible for parole consideration after serving 30 percent of his sentence. He has served a year and a half.
Ms. Wood was killed Dec. 23, 2009, as she crossed Fourth Street on the way to work. There was testimony that Lane had been drinking and using marijuana at his work at the Chattanooga Billiard Club nearby on Cherry Street prior to the incident.
However, officers did not take a blood-alcohol test of Lane, and the jury did not find him guilty of DUI or the most serious count of vehicle homicide.
He was given the maximum six years for vehicular homicide by reckless conduct, the maximum four years for filing a false police report and one year out of a maximum two years for leaving the scene of an accident where a death was involved. The latter one-year sentence is by law consecutive to the six years.
Prosecutor Neal Pinkston said under the law under the vehicular homicide conviction that Lane loses his driver's license for 10 years.
Judge Poole noted that Lane gave "an outlandish" statement to police initially, saying that a black male had taken his car from him.
Brian Johnson of the probation office said Lane gave a statement about the case in which he admitted drinking beer and smoking marijuana prior to hitting Ms. Wood.
He said Lane's prior cases include a 2004 DUI as well as public intoxication, speeding and drinking on a suspended license.
He said Lane told him he had been drinking beer since he was 18 and using marijuana since he was 17. He said Lane said he drank a couple of beers a week and used marijuana "every now and then."
Karen Berry Duncan, older sister of Ms. Wood, told of getting the call about the incident from their brother, Steve Berry.
She said, "We didn't have a holiday that year. We had a funeral."
She said she had reworked her statement to present at the sentencing hearing many times, saying she had gone from anger "not to forgiveness, but to acceptance."
Ms. Duncan said she wanted Lane to know "that our lives were forever changed with the receipt of one phone call."
The Erlanger nurse said some of those who treated Ms. Wood at the emergency room "were so shaken that they had to take the rest of the day off."
She said, "A violent and senseless death is harder to take."
Ms. Duncan said her sister will miss out on so many things in the lives of her daughter, Rachel, and son, Brody.
At the funeral she said, "Susan was so loved that people waited for hours outside the funeral home."
The victim's mother, Charlotte Berry, said, "She was a great mother," while recalling that she would wrap her babies in warm towels after bathing them.
She told of getting a call from Susan's husband, Matt Wood, saying she had been hit and asking her to get there as soon as she could. She said she arrived in 10 minutes "and Matt was shaking so much I didn't think we would get to the hospital."
Her voice breaking, she told Lane, "You'll never know what a terrible change came into our lives that day. We had to tell her two children their mom was never coming back."
The children were ages 11 and eight at the time.
Janice Bond, mother of the defendant, said she was divorced from his father, Jimmy A. Lane, when Jeremy was five. She said she was remarried to Gary Bond when he was 10 or 11.
She said he was diagnosed at age five with ADHD and has had trouble with "impulse control."
At the time of the incident she said he was "a typical 20-something living for himself."
She said he was beat up twice at the jail and had to be placed in isolation.
Ms. Bond said her son fathered two boys by a girlfriend, and he is now engaged to marry another woman. She said he has to pay $353 a month in child support.
Bobby Colvin said he was Lane's youth leader at the First Baptist Church and he said he has been going to see him at the jail every Friday morning.
He said, "I've seen a big change in him over the recent months." It was testified that he got his GED while in jail and also took some courses offered by First Things First. He dropped out of high school shortly before graduation.
The witness said, "I know he has the family in his concern and prayers."
District Attorney Bill Cox said Lane had "a history of avoiding responsibility and a failure to face the consequences of his actions."
He said he "came up with an outrageous story" after hitting Ms. Wood.
The district attorney said, "The magnitude of what he's done, I don't think he realizes at all."
Attorney Dan Ripper noted the jury had acquitted him of all charges involving drugs and alcohol.
He said, "We just ask for a fair sentence."