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MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) – The motive force in a hit-and-run crash that killed the daddy of rapper Nicki Minaj final yr was sentenced Wednesday to a yr in jail, in step with a promise the decide made when the person pleaded responsible in Might.
Charles Polevich, who pleaded responsible to leaving the scene and tampering with proof within the crash on New York’s Lengthy Island that killed Robert Maraj, was additionally ordered to pay a $5,000 effective and had his driver’s license suspended for six months.
Polevich’s lawyer, Marc Gann, urged his consumer might have had a medical situation on the time of the crash and that he wasn’t totally conscious of what had occurred when he fled.
Polevich, 72, stated in courtroom that he’s “been heartsick since realizing the extent of the tragedy” and that there was “no excuse” for his conduct.
Polevich struck Maraj, 64, whereas Maraj was strolling alongside Roslyn Highway in Mineola in February 2021. Polevich stopped briefly to ask Maraj if he was OK, however didn’t name for assist, prosecutors stated.
As a substitute, Polevich went house, parked the automobile – a white, 1992 Volvo station wagon – in his storage and lined it with a tarp, prosecutors stated. Maraj was taken to a hospital and pronounced useless the following day.
Prosecutors sought a sentence of 1 to 3 years behind bars, however Nassau County Choose Howard Sturim stated in Might, when Polevich pleaded responsible, that he would get “no multiple yr in jail.”
Brendan Brosh, a spokesperson for the Nassau County district legal professional’s workplace, stated that “given the severity of the defendant’s conduct,” prosecutors felt a stiffer sentence was warranted.
“We proceed to specific our condolences to the household of Robert Maraj,” Brosh stated.
Gann requested for a 90-day jail sentence, arguing that different components outdoors of Polevich’s management had been partially in charge for the crash, together with highway development, road lights that weren’t working and Maraj’s bodily situation.
Maraj’s widow, Carol Maraj, is suing Polevich over the crash.
Polevich, who had been splitting time between Lengthy Island and Guam, the place he runs a drilling and water purification enterprise, surrendered to police a number of days after the crash.
Detectives stated they used items of surveillance video to trace the Volvo concerned within the crash to Polevich’s Mineola house.
Nicki Minaj, the platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated rapper of “Anaconda,” “Tremendous Bass” and different hits, was born Onika Tanya Maraj in Trinidad and was raised in Queens.
In a put up on her web site, Minaj, 39, known as her father’s demise “probably the most devastating lack of my life.”
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