Man who killed woman in car accident gets five years

By Denise G. Callahan, Staff Writer Updated 8:18 PM Tuesday, October 18, 2011

HAMILTON â€" A Hamilton man will spend the next five years in prison for failing to stop after he was involved in an accident that killed a woman.

Julio Cesar Olvera-Mejia, 24, plead guilty Aug. 24 to failure to stop after an accident, a third-degree felony. Butler County Judge Charles Pater gave Olvera-Mejia the maximum sentence of five years and imposed a $5,000 fine on Tuesday.

Olvera-Mejia went left of the center line on April 3 and hit 43-year-old Jennifer Bowling of Hamilton at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Linden Street. She was flown to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton where she died about five hours later. Olvera-Mejia left the accident scene.

Assistant Prosecutor Greg Stephens said the judge gave Olvera-Mejia the maximum sentence because of the impact on the victim’s family and “the callous disregard for the other person that this person showed when he left the scene.”

Olvera-Mejia’s attorney Glenn Rossi said he didn’t have an expectation going into the sentencing hearing as to what the judge might do.

“Obviously when a death is involved it’s hard to tell how the case will end up,” he said. “It was a difficult circumstance for everybody involved.”

Previously, Olvera-Mejia plead guilty in June to two misdemeanors, vehicular manslaughter and going left of the center line, but was expected fight the felony charge in court before pleading in August. Pater sentenced him on the misdemeanor charges to 90 days in the Butler County jail, fined him $900 and suspended his driver’s license for two years.