A Highland woman was sentenced to five years in the Indiana Department of Correction on Thursday for her second fatal crash.
Lisa Damico, 53, was convicted in December of reckless homicide in the Jan. 30, 2022, fatal crash near the Highland Meijer that killed Socorro Keresztes, 70, of Munster.
She faced one to six years. She will be credited about 2.5 years after her lawyer Russell Brown successfully argued the law gave her a big chunk of time on home detention.
Indiana law requires inmates to serve at least 75% of their remaining sentence.
Damico was acquitted in July in an earlier Aug. 18, 2021 crash near the Highland Walgreens on Ridge Road that killed Tyler Scheidt, 21, of Highland, who was crossing the street.
Scheidt’s parents, friends and family filled the hearing. Keresztes’ daughter spoke on her behalf.
On the stand, Highland Police Det. Cmdr. Jason Hildenbrand went over Damico’s driving history.
She slid on ice and hit a Dunkin Donuts sign in May 2021 on Ridge Road in Calumet Township, he said. Officers noted she was speeding.
The Scheidt crash happened in August.
Damico was cited on Oct. 15, 2021, for driving the wrong way on I-94 in Porter County, where she nearly hit a semi, and then flipped into a ditch. Then, the Keresztes crash happened on Jan. 30, 2022.
Damon Scheidt, Tyler’s father, testified.
Brown objected to it and also to victim impact letters from Scheidt’s family. He was allowed to testify about learning of the later crash.
Scheidt said he had gotten home from work early on Jan. 30, when his wife Donna told him there was another crash. A woman Damico’s age was involved.
“You don’t suppose that’s her,” she said, he recalled.
There’s no way, he thought. They knew about the October 2021 crash and wanted Damico off the road.
“I looked at my wife (then), and said, ‘She’s going to do this again,” he said.
Damico will get to “scratch off” the time until she gets out, while they will always live without their son.
“Please, save other people, give her the maximum,” he later told Judge Salvador Vasquez. “I don’t think she’s done.”
Angela Keresztes, 30, Socorro’s daughter and only child, told the court she had been devastated by her mom’s death. It was supposed to be an uneventful day for her, too. She had just started after going back to finish her college degree.
Her mother was supposed to meet with some Filipino friends. Then, Angela got a call from her mother’s friend that there was an accident. She left a “frantic” voicemail on a number he gave her to call. An online locator showed her mom’s cell phone was at the Highland Police Department.
Then, she looked online and learned her mom was in a crash from a news article. She saw the photos, “screamed” and “collapsed”.
The next two weeks before the funeral were a “blur” and she has struggled ever since. Angela said her mom “worked hard,” “worried” and “sacrificed” to provide for her and finally started to enjoy herself after she retired in 2020.
Without her, “my life looks completely different,” Angela said.
Damico has shown “zero ability” to think or act “selflessly.” she said. Damico’s sentence was the “only form of justice” for her and Scheidt’s family.
They both deserve for her to go to prison, she said.
Brown asked for her to avoid prison — wanting time served, or day reporting in Lake County Community Corrections. Damico had no criminal history, adding the case was a “tragedy”.
Deputy Prosecutor Keith Anderson disagreed, citing the four crashes.
Anderson quoted the presentence investigation report, where Damico said driving after Scheidt’s death wasn’t a “risk”, because the Keresztes crash wasn’t “intentional.”
“She does not realize the danger she puts every single person on the road,” he said.
She was “just not a good person,” the prosecutor said. Damico was “manipulative” and “deceitful.”
She was lucky she didn’t “kill herself” in the I-94 crash, he said. He has asked around to see if any other prosecutor had a case where someone had killed two people — including drunk drivers — in back-to-back crashes.
“No one could remember anyone,” he said. “She is the worst of the worst.”
The Indiana Department of Motor Vehicles follows a court-recommendation to suspend a license up to five years after a reckless homicide conviction. Anderson told Vasquez they wanted a five year suspension.
It was “inappropriate” for no prison time. He asked for six years.
Brown noted he had never seen the Oct. 15, 2021 accident report and objected. Vasquez told another prosecutor to get and make copies so he and Brown could read it.
Brown requested a recess to call the state troopers.
“Denied, do it now,” the judge said.
Anderson said later the October crash was listed in her driving record.
Brown argued Damico was proactive by getting a second opinion from another neurologist after the second crash and hadn’t driven since. She was diagnosed with epilepsy as a kid. Later on, as the case was pending, she was also diagnosed with syncope.
Damico spoke in court, saying her remorse was “unbearable.”
She noted the second anniversary of Keresztes’s death was two days earlier, and she couldn’t imagine going through the holidays without her loved ones.
She felt “terrible all this happened” and vowed to “never drive again.”
Vasquez noted she had no criminal history. That wasn’t “ignored.”
However, all those crashes were a sign she shouldn’t be driving. It should have been a sign to anyone that something’s “wrong” — whether it was their “mindset,” “medication” or “behavior.”
“This pattern cannot be ignored,” he said. It was “reckless” and irresponsible.
“This was predictable,” he said of the Jan. 30, 2022 crash.
Scheidt’s case was charged on Jan. 31, 2022, the day after Keresztes was killed.
He said the case was still under investigation and the court didn’t have a “crystal ball” to see what could have been done differently.
“Probably nothing at all,” he said.
Damico was getting a prison sentence. Probation or community corrections was “not appropriate.”
“There has to be a consequence,” he said.
As Vasquez handed the sentence, Donna Scheidt, Tyler’s mother, appeared to cry.
Damico was handcuffed in front. She didn’t appear to show emotion.
After the hearing, Damon Scheidt said they had “mixed feelings” now that the court case was over. They were happy Damico was going to jail, but “wished it was longer.” “Overall, we’re happy with the verdict,” he said.
When police responded to Indianapolis Boulevard and Ramblewood Drive, Keresztes’ silver Hyundai was half on the curb near the First Financial Bank sign, while Damico’s blue Volvo was in the Panda Express parking lot, 250 feet across the street, charges state.
Witnesses told police Damico’s car wove in and out of Indianapolis Boulevard before she appeared to go into the eastbound turn lane, did not brake before speeding through the red light and slamming into Keresztes’ car.
Witnesses flagged down an officer to Keresztes’ car. The front end was smashed and he couldn’t open the doors to help her, records state.
Damico said she “blacked out,” then woke up to see her car was wrecked, not remembering how she crashed, an affidavit states. She thought the damage was only to her car, police wrote.
A witness said she pulled over and held Keresztes’ hand until she died, an affidavit states. The crash was caught on traffic cameras.
A native of the Philippines, Keresztes, the matriarch of her family, was “gentle, caring, and selfless” and had recently retired in 2020 after working more than 25 years at Franciscan Health, an online fundraising page and her obituary said. She is survived by an adult daughter and extended relatives.
A GoFundMe page said Keresztes was headed to Meijer that morning to pick up ingredients to make banana bread.
mcolias@post-trib.com
