Woman whose son died in OVI crash gets 8 years in prison

A 27-year-old Toledo woman was sent to prison Tuesday for eight years for a high-speed, drunken car crash that killed her 9-year-old son.

Judge Lindsay Navarre told Dashawna Smith, of the 3300 block of Wilson Drive, in Lucas County Common Pleas Court that while no sentence would bring Trevon Richardson back to life, the term “will give you time to reflect on who you will be when you get out of prison.”

Police said Smith was driving northwest on Monroe Street at 2:05 a.m. on Jan. 29, 2023 when the vehicle went off the street at Robinwood Avenue, near the Toledo Museum of Art, and hit a light pole. Judge Navarre said Tuesday her vehicle’s speed had been estimated at 71 mph when it crashed.

Smith pleaded guilty April 9 to first-degree aggravated vehicular homicide as well as operating a vehicle while impaired. Along with the prison time, which could be extended by up to four years if she misbehaves behind bars, Judge Navarre revoked her driver’s license — a statutory mandate — and fined her $875.

Wearing a red T-shirt showing pictures of her son below a proclamation “Forever 9” on the back facing the gallery, Smith stood silently facing the judge during the proceeding.

In a sentencing memorandum, defense lawyer Jeffrey Crowther said Smith, an exotic dancer, had been celebrating an engagement with her friends the night before and drove to her mother’s home uneventfully — with a friend following in another car to observe.

But while her mother thought Smith was safely home for the night, Smith instead then loaded the boy into a safety seat and drove, as the lawyer put it, “her life into oblivion.”

Because of a head injury, Mr. Crowther noted, she has no memory of the crash, but “she is cursed by the haunting of having no memory of the last moments of time with ‘her baby’ and trying to live with that knowledge.”

“The tragedy of this is staggering,” Judge Navarre said. “No sentence I can give you could compare to what you will now live with for the rest of your life.”

Three other counts in Smith’s indictment were dismissed at prosecutors’ request, while the judge ordered destroyed a gun police found in Smith’s vehicle at the crash scene.