Charles Polevich on the Nassau County Courthouse for sentencing on Wednesday in Mineola, N.Y. Polevich, the driver in a hit-and-run crash that killed the father of rapper Nicki Minaj final year has been sentenced to a year in jail.
Howard Schnapp/AP
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Howard Schnapp/AP
Charles Polevich on the Nassau County Courthouse for sentencing on Wednesday in Mineola, N.Y. Polevich, the driver in a hit-and-run crash that killed the father of rapper Nicki Minaj final year has been sentenced to a year in jail.
Howard Schnapp/AP
MINEOLA, N.Y. — The driver in a hit-and-run crash that killed the father of rapper Nicki Minaj final year was sentenced Wednesday to a year in jail, in maintaining with a promise the choose made when the person pleaded responsible in May.
Charles Polevich, who pleaded responsible to leaving the scene and tampering with proof in the crash on New York’s Long Island that killed Robert Maraj, was additionally ordered to pay a $5,000 high quality and had his driver’s license suspended for six months.
Polevich’s lawyer, Marc Gann, advised his shopper could have had a medical subject on the time of the crash and that he wasn’t absolutely conscious of what had occurred when he fled.
Polevich, 72, mentioned in court docket that he is “been heartsick since realizing the extent of the tragedy” and that there was “no excuse” for his habits.
Maraj’s widow, Carol Maraj, mentioned in court docket that Polevich had left her husband “like a dog on the street” and that sparing him a longer jail sentence was a “slap in the face for the family,” Newsday reported.
Polevich struck Maraj, 64, whereas Maraj was strolling alongside Roslyn Road in Mineola in February 2021. Polevich stopped briefly to ask Maraj if he was OK, however did not name for assist, prosecutors mentioned.
Instead, Polevich went residence, parked the automobile — a white, 1992 Volvo station wagon — in his storage and lined it with a tarp, prosecutors mentioned. Maraj was taken to a hospital and pronounced useless the following day.
Prosecutors sought a sentence of one to three years behind bars, however Nassau County Judge Howard Sturim mentioned in May, when Polevich pleaded responsible, that he would get “no more than one year in jail.”
Brendan Brosh, a spokesperson for the Nassau County district legal professional’s workplace, mentioned that “given the severity of the defendant’s conduct,” prosecutors felt a stiffer sentence was warranted.
“We continue to express our condolences to the family of Robert Maraj,” Brosh mentioned.
Gann requested for a 90-day jail sentence, arguing that different components outdoors of Polevich’s management had been partially to blame for the crash, together with highway building, 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 Long Island and Guam, the place he runs a drilling and water purification enterprise, surrendered to police a few days after the crash.
Detectives mentioned they used items of surveillance video to monitor the Volvo concerned in the crash to Polevich’s Mineola residence.
Nicki Minaj, the platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated rapper of “Anaconda,” “Super 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 loss of life “the most devastating loss of my life.”