NEW LONDON, Conn. – A Massachusetts truck driver who caused a crash that killed a 26-year-old man and two children on a Connecticut highway was sentenced Tuesday to six months in prison — and also was offered forgiveness by the children's mother.
Gerard Dube, of Swansea, Massachusetts, was sentenced in New London Superior Court after pleading guilty in November to three counts of negligent homicide with a motor vehicle. He also was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to perform 100 hours of community service.
Dube, 62, was driving a tractor-trailer when he rear-ended a car slowing for congestion caused by a prior accident on Interstate 95 in Waterford in October 2014, authorities said.
Darin Robinson, 26, died along with a 3-year-old boy, Dacari, and a 9-year-old girl, Sanaa. The children's mother and Robinson's fiancee, Baughnita Leary, was badly injured. The family lived in Meriden.
Leary told the judge that she had no position on how long Dube spends behind bars because there is nothing that would make her feel better, The Day reported.
"Whether he does three days, or three years or a million years or the rest of his life in jail, it's not going to feel better," Leary said.
She asked that Dube do something special to remember the children and Robinson on their birthdays or the anniversary of their deaths, and when she was done speaking, she hugged Dube and said, "I forgive you."
Dube, a father of three, was not impaired by alcohol or drugs and not distracted, according to police.
The crash affected him deeply, his wife said in court.
Her husband is "in his own living hell" and wakes up screaming because of the accident, Susan Dube said.
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