Crime & Safety
Driver of Fatal Hit-Skip Sentenced to 10 Years
Victim was Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School graduate Charlene Vargo Kuzda.
The driver of the car that struck and killed Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School graduate Charlene Vargo Kuzda Feb. 15 has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Judge Alison McCarty sentenced on Friday. Jilek was driving home in Richfield after a night of drinking in February and hit Kuzda while she was walking her dog with her boyfriend. Kudza and the dog died. The boyfriend was not injured.
Jilek did not stop until she got home nearby, where police found her passed out. Her car's windshield was smashed. Police said her blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit.
She pleaded no contest to the charges in May. She is sentenced to seven years in prison for aggravated vehicular homicide with a lifetime license suspension, and three years in prison for failure to stop after an accident/hit skip, to run consecutively.
Kuzda was born in Parma and grew up in Broadview Heights. She was a 1991 graduate of .
Kudza, 37, who lived in Richfield, was assistant manager for the , where she had worked for the last two years.
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