Wichita man sentenced in crash death of 70-year-old woman walking to Sunday mass
A Wichita man who killed a 70-year-old church-goer with his car then left the scene this past summer has been sentenced to three years of probation, Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Dan Dillon said.
Sedgwick County District Judge Chrystal Krier also ordered JeCarlos B. Kemp, 22, to take defensive driving and anger management courses when she sentenced him Wednesday, Dillon said. Kemp’s probation carries an underlying prison sentence of 10 years, 10 months, but he won’t have to serve that time if he follows all conditions of his probation.
Kemp struck Nancy McDonough-Harmening of Wichita with a Mercury Grand Marquis around 5:25 p.m. on June 18 as she was crossing the street to attend Sunday evening mass with her sister at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, 124 N. Roosevelt. Kemp was traveling westbound on Douglas at the time, Wichita police have said. Other church-goers ran to McDonough-Harmening’s aid until she could be taken to a hospital.
But Kemp drove off and didn’t call 911, court records say.
Police have said he returned to the crash site about 20 minutes later after a friend he called in a panic encouraged him to go back. Kemp told police he was heading home after visiting his son and picking up food from a restaurant and didn’t see McDonough-Harmening crossing the street, according to an affidavit released by the court.
He told police she wasn’t in a crosswalk and that he initially stopped after striking her but drove away because he “got scared,” the affidavit says.
McDonough-Harmening died about an hour after the collision from blunt force trauma that included head, neck and rib injuries, broken bones and a lacerated aorta and lung, court records show.
Kemp pleaded guilty on Nov. 29 to one count of leaving the scene of an accident. In a written motion, his defense attorney asked the judge to place him on probation, saying Kemp “is repentant and contrite, and accepted full responsibility” when he pleaded guilty and that he was “unlikely to repeat a mistake made in his youth.”
McDonough-Harmening’s obituary described her as a longtime banquet server at the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel who “had a heart of gold” and loved God, her family and friends and “the thousands of people that she served.”
