Max sentence doled in serious Greenwood DUI crash
GREENWOOD, Ind. (WISH) – A judge has sentenced a Greenwood man to the maximum sentence possible for driving drunk and causing a serious crash back in November 2013.
Officials say the accident left a man blind in his right eye, and it left a woman and her son with medical expenses that total nearly a half million dollars.
I-Team 8 obtained the police radio traffic from that night. The officer is heard saying, “…got a vehicle fleeing from me…approaching Main Street.”
The officer is then heard saying, “…big crash, big crash.” The car crashed into Michael Brown and fiance Vestina Greznow and her 6-year-old son Kayne.
ONLINE EXTRA | Full video of the crash
Surveillance video captured the sheer violence of the crash. Greznow was critically injured.
Brown suffered a traumatic brain injury and lost vision in one eye.
“What I remember is absolutely nothing,” Brown said. “That’s the scary part of it.”
Police say the night of the crash, Derek Means was driving with a blood-alcohol content at more than three times the legal limit. He “stumbled out of the vehicle” crying, according to police. When asked why he fled, he said, “Because I am drunk. This is going to ruin my life.”
I- Team 8 learned this isn’t his first arrest. Ontario, Calif. police arrested him in 2008 for a hit-and-run accident and DUI. Before he was even convicted of those crimes, within a year, Plainfield police arrested him for OWI in July 2009. He pleaded guilty to OWI a month later.
Derek Means will spend the next 12 years in prison and for four years after that, he will be on probation.