‘Unbearable sadness’: Family grieves daughter’s loss as pickup driver sentenced in fatal Columbus crash
Nearly five years after a Columbus woman fatally was injured in a crash on Double Churches Road, the other driver involved was sentenced Friday in Muscogee Superior Court.
Zachary Alexander Norris had been charged with felony homicide by vehicle in the Aug. 6, 2017, wreck that killed 26-year-old Jessica Amy Oberlin, but he was sentenced to five years probation after pleading guilty to five misdemeanors in a deal negotiated by defense attorney Stacey Jackson.
He pleaded to misdemeanor homicide by vehicle, reckless driving, speeding, going too fast for the road conditions and wearing no seat belt. While sentencing him to probation, Judge Arthur Smith IIII ordered Norris to perform 100 hours of community service and to pay nearly $6,000 to a state victims compensation fund that helped cover Oberlin’s funeral expenses.
Smith sentenced Norris as a first offender, meaning his record will be cleared if he successfully completes probation. Jackson said his client had no criminal record before the crash.
The collision
Columbus police said officers were called to Double Churches Road and Nature Trail around 7:50 that rainy night. They said Oberlin, who was driving a 2007 Toyota Prius, had just turned onto Double Churches from a stop sign on Nature Trail.
Norris’ 2007 GMC Sierra 2500 was traveling west in Double Churches Road’s left lane, having just switched back to that side after swerving to the right lane to pass another vehicle, officers said. The left front of the GMC collided with the left side of Oberlin’s Prius, causing extensive damage and severe injury, investigators said.
Rushed to the hospital, Oberlin was pronounced dead at 8:15 p.m., authorities said.
Police initially said Oberlin was at fault, having failed to yield the right of way when she turned onto Double Churches Road. But after reviewing a data-collection device on the truck, and questioning the driver who reported Norris’ swerving to the right lane to pass that motorist’s vehicle, investigators alleged Norris committed multiple traffic violations.
They claimed Norris, 26 years old at the time, was going 93 mph in a 45-mph zone.
But Jackson told the court Friday that this assessment of Norris’ speed “unequivocably cannot be proven,” as evidence from the truck’s data recorder did not substantiate it. A more accurate estimate was 53 mph, he said.
Jackson also said crews later altered the intersection, after Oberlin’s death, moving the Nature Trail stop sign nearly 34 feet closer to Double Churches Road so drivers better could see oncoming traffic.
He noted also that Norris’ truck was much larger and heavier than Oberlin’s Prius, so extensive damage from a collision was inevitable. “That’s just like a watermelon and an orange bumping into each other,” he said, later adding, “There’s just a lot of unfortunate circumstances in this case.”
The family
Before sentencing Norris, Smith heard testimony from Oberlin’s parents and husband, who tried to explain the depth of their loss.
The mother, Heidi Savage, said her first-born child was also her first blood relative, because she herself had been adopted. “She was a gift that I had longed for my whole life, before her birth,” she said.
The loss was hard to bear for all who knew Jessica, she said: “It changed my life and the life of my family forever.”
The father, Richard Noble, recalled cradling his newborn daughter in his arms as he walked from the delivery room to the hospital nursery. “I was the first person who ever held Jessica,” he said. “That was a special bond for me.”
Turning to Norris, Noble said, “She died because of your excessive speed and reckless regard for social norms.... You killed a very precious person.”
He recalled how he and his daughter loved to joke together. “She had a beautiful laugh,” he said. The first months of his 2017 calendar were marked with notes his daughter wrote to him, he added. “Thinking of you, Dad,” one said.
She loved to celebrate holidays, he noted, to Norris saying, “All of those holidays I will not get to spend with my daughter, and have not got to spend with her, because of your actions.”
Ryan Oberlin said he served in the military here, but Columbus feels alien to him now.
“This should feel like coming home, but there’s a shadow over my life now,” he said, adding, “There’s an unbearable sadness that is indescribable.”
This story was originally published May 13, 2022 at 1:54 PM.