WHEELING — The man behind the wheel of the car in the crash that killed Wheeling Park High School student Devin Sovinsky in 2023 will spend at least the next three years in jail, and could serve more.

Cory Sipos will spend no fewer than three years in jail and could remain there for as many as 15 years after First Judicial Court Judge Jason Cuomo sentenced Sipos on Monday. Sipos pleaded guilty to the charge of DUI causing death on Nov. 18.

Sipos will be eligible for parole after he has served three years at the Northern Regional Correctional Facility and Jail. Hancock County Prosecutor Steven Dragisich, who was appointed to the case as a special prosecutor, said Sipos would serve “about another year” in prison if his parole was denied and then be eligible for parole within the next year after that.

“If they grant his (Sipos) parole, he would be on parole for a period of time supervised by a parole officer,” Dragisich said.

Sipos was the driver in the fatal crash that occurred along Bethany Pike in the early morning of July 18, 2023. Sovinsky was found unresponsive by first responders to the crash and was pronounced dead at 4:05 a.m. at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital.

According to West Virginia State Police crime lab analysis of a blood sample from Sipos, who was 18 years old at the time of the crash, he allegedly had a blood alcohol content of 0.116 during the crash.

Before Cuomo delivered his sentence, Sipos and his attorney Quan Le presented why Cuomo should consider suspending the sentence and instead have Sipos committed to the commissioner of corrections for assignment to the Anthony Correctional Center, a co-ed correctional facility.

Sipos apologized for the “damage” he caused to the Sovinsky family. He said his “reckless and dumb actions” caught up to not only him but Sovinsky as well.

“I grew up with Devin spending a lot of time goofing off and making fun memories,” Sipos said. “He was the best friend I could have asked for. Growing up through high school, we started hanging out more and more, and I started acting more and more dumb.”

Sipos said he wished the events of July 18, 2023, never happened and apologized for drinking and driving recklessly. He promised to not “dishonor” Sovinsky any further and to not drink or abuse substances in the future.

“I will make sure to use this irresponsible and tragic event to better myself and not hurt any more people,” Sipos said. “I take full responsibility for my selfish and stupid mistake. I am prepared to deal with my consequences.”

Sipos’s attorney Quan Le said the case was “tragic and devastating,” but noted the incident was “still an accident.”

“This is an 18-year-old who didn’t understand that youth doesn’t equal immortality,” Le said. “I remember doing stupid things when I was that age, but I was just a whole lot luckier than Cory ever was. You know right from wrong (at that age), but you might not know your limitations.”

Le also noted Sipos’s lack of criminal history and that he accepted “full responsibility” for the crash, including pleading guilty to DUI causing death. He added that Sipos spent his pretrial time “working and being productive,” including attending counseling and alcoholics anonymous meetings.

Due to the Sipos’s “strong potential for rehabilitation,” Le asked Cuomo to suspend his sentence and have Sipos committed to the Anthony Correctional Center.

Cuomo responded that did not believe Sipos could be sent to the Anthony Correctional Center, as the statute requires that to be sent to the facility Sipos would have to be placed on probation and Sipos’s discharge does not make him eligible for probation.

After the defense gave their side for the sentencing, Dragisich presented why Sipos deserved the maximum sentence for the charge. Dragisich was appointed to the case as a special prosecutor by the Prosecutor’s Institute due to the conflict of Sipos’s grandfather being an Ohio County house arrest officer. Sipos’s father is also a former Ohio County Sheriff’s Office deputy.

The prosecution presented several witnesses, including friends and family of Sovinsky, who shared the impact the loss of Sovinsky had on their lives and why they believed Sipos must receive the maximum sentence for his actions.

Sovinsky’s father, Kevin Sovinsky, said the loss of his son had taken a “devastating toll” on the family. He recounted his struggles of returning to work due to the emotional distress and the lack of sleep the loss had caused him, along with the pain his entire family was now enduring.

Kevin Sovinsky noted that Sipos’s actions on July 18, 2023, were “not isolated.” He said that Sipos had “a history with similar behavior” that was “consistently overlooked” due to his family’s connections to local law enforcement.

“I am skeptical about receiving a genuine apology from Mr. Sipos, especially considering his history of reckless behavior,” Kevin Sovinsky said. “He made a boastful social media post immediately after the accident where he joked about reaching speeds of over 90 miles per hour and only suffering a broken nose. My son was dead before you (Sipos) even left the scene and you still put that on social media.”

Sovinsky’s mother, Roberta “Bobbi” Porter, addressed Sipos during her statement. She noted that while his family still got to visit Sipos “behind plexiglass” during the holidays, her family had to “go to a plot and stare at the ground” to visit their son due to Sipos’s “carelessness.”

“We never got to see our son graduate,” Porter said. “It was an empty chair with flowers on it.”

Porter noted that Sipos “chose to get behind the wheel” the night of the crash while he could have let someone else drive. She said now many were “hurting and suffering” because of Sipos’s “reckless, selfish choice.”

“I just hope one day you actually come to terms with the fact that you took a human life,” Porter said to Sipos. “I don’t even know how I would be able to face people in public knowing that I killed someone. My life is dark, cold and black, and now I have to dig myself out of a hole just so I can raise my other child and know that she is going to be okay.”

Dragisich asked Cuomo that Sipos receive the maximum sentence due to not only his actions on July 18, 2023, causing the loss of a “beloved family member” but also his history of reckless actions before the crash.

“There is Snapchat evidence that was submitted in this matter, within weeks of the crash, of him [Sipos] driving 110 miles and having a marijuana joint in his mouth,” Dragisich said. “A friend of Sipos said that he regularly drove that fast and thought it was fun to hit 100 miles an hour.”

Dragisich stated Sipos did not show remorse after the crash, with the “most telling” evidence of this being Sipos’s actions the night of the crash. He noted that Sipos would have “escaped responsibility” if it was not for Dr. John Holloway, a resident who was the first at the crash site, deciding to call 911.

“Mr. Sipos was trying to deflect responsibility saying ‘I’ll call my dad or I’ll call the family members and we’ll have somebody get my car out,'” Dragisich said. “He didn’t tell Dr. Holloway that Devin was in the back seat. He [Sipos] came up from the bank and told him ‘We’re OK. We’ll get a tow truck out here.'”

Dragisich said Wheeling Police Officer Collin Jamison, who responded to the crash, reported that Sipos tore the license plate off of his vehicle to “avoid detection of the identification of his vehicle.”

“It was the lack of remorse that let me overcome the fact that this kid just turned 18 days ago [at the time of the crash],” Dragisich said. “It’s his actions that show the lack of remorse that really gave me the opinion of what his sentence should be.”

Before delivering the sentence, Cuomo said “all he could do” when considering the sentencing for “tragedies” such as this one is put himself “in the position of both parties.”

Cuomo said he could “obviously” understand the devastation of his son being killed as a father of two, but he could “not get past” what his actions would be if his son was in Sipos’s position. Cuomo noted that no member of Sipos’s family had spoken on his behalf today.

“I’m thinking in my head right now, if my son was in your (Sipos’s), I would not only plead for my son’s life but be begging for mercy and apologizing over and over to the family,” Cuomo said to Sipos. “I offered you a chance to have anybody that you want to speak and nobody came forward. What’s also striking to me, if this were truly an accident and you were truly his best friend, I wouldn’t be hearing so much anger (from Sovinsky’s family members).”

Cuomo added that an “accident” under the law is defined as “unintentionally doing something and not intending the consequences.” He said that while Sipos did not intend to cause the crash, his actions that resulted in the crash were “reckless conduct,” which means he “intentionally performed an act without regard to the consequences.”

“You intentionally consumed alcohol, intentionally drove at unreasonable speeds without regard to what might happen if you got in an accident,” Cuomo said. “That is reckless conduct and as a result, somebody was killed.”

Cuomo said the sentence of three to 15 years “had to be imposed” as that would be the “only thing” that could hold Sipos accountable for his actions on that day and for his past record of reckless driving and substance use.

“This was not a question of if this was going to happen to you and somebody innocent, but when,” Cuomo said to Sipos. “It just so happened to fall unfortunately upon this family, and the only option I see here, even if Anythony’s Center was viable, is three to 15 years.”

After Cuomo delivered the sentence, Le requested that Sipos be put under protective custody due to his father and grandfather being involved in local law enforcement. In response to Cuomo questioning what protective custody would involve, Le asked that Sipos be segregated from the general population in prison.

Cuomo said that would be “up to the executive department” of the Northern Regional Correctional Facility and that Sipos would be put in the general population of the prison at the beginning of his sentence. He asked that Le and Dragisich meet with the warden or “anybody within the executive branch” to see if they could come to a resolution regarding how Sipos would serve his sentence.

Following the sentencing, Dragisich said he was “happy” with Cuomo’s decision to sentence Sipos to the maximum amount of time allowable by law. He noted that Sipos may be eligible for the “Good Con” program under WV state code and the WV Division of Corrections, which would allow Sipos to serve only seven and a half years and then be released as discharging his sentence.

“The maximum that he can do, practically, is seven and a half years,” Dragisich said. “It would be one-half of the total maximum sentence, but he definitely has to serve three years before he’s even eligible for parole.”

Dragisich said he hoped the sentence would give the family “a little bit of closure” and help them deal with Sovinsky’s death “a little bit better.”

“I was happy at least that we could get some kind of accountability for Mr. Sipos’s actions and help out the family,” Dragisich said.