Pennsylvania man sentenced to at least 3 years for deadly DUI horse and buggy crash

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — A Pennsylvania man has been sentenced to at least three years in prison for his role in a deadly DUI horse and buggy crash.

Phillip Sullivan II of Lititz was sentenced to three to eight years in prison for his role in a July 2021 crash that killed 18-year-old Andrew Stoltzfus, the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office said. Sullivan, who also received seven years of probation, pleaded guilty last week to charges, including homicide by vehicle while DUI.

The district attorney’s office said Sullivan admitted to having a .103 BAC and THC in his system when he crashed into Stoltzfus’s horse and buggy on Division Highway on July 5, 2021, at around 2:34 a.m. Officials said Sullivan was driving home from a Fourth of July party. The collision also killed the horse.

An investigation found Sullivan was driving approximately 68 miles per hour in a 45-mile-per-hour zone. He left the scene of the crash, officials said. 

“[The Amish community] refrains that it is not their place to judge and that it is up to any person, and in this case the defendant, to take that second chance and make something of it,” Assistant District Attorney Kyle Linardo said to Lancaster County Judge Jeffrey Wright on behalf of the victim’s family. “I am not here to ask your honor to not offer a second chance, but I am asking your honor to protect the citizens of the Commonwealth in the interim.”

Linardo asked the judge to sentence Sullivan to 6 to 20 years in prison. The max sentence was 27 1/2 years.