Driver who killed sleeping boys in the NJ crash

A man who hit a parked car in New Jersey in 2023 and killed a boy who slept inside when his father and brother fished nearby, will spend the next 15 years behind bars.

On Tuesday, Edward W. Johnston, 25, from Galloway Township, New Jersey, was killed during an emotional hearing in which friends and family of Javier Velez (8) from Philadelphia, who was killed on Sunday, July 23, 2023.

During the hearing, the prosecutors found that Johnston drank for a few hours before the crash and that his blood alcohol content was twice as high when the incident was introduced.

“I just want to ask why … why? 107 brother?” A tearful Orlando Velez, the child's father, who referred to the speed, wondered with the Johnston's vehicle with the crash. “I don't feel anything for you, brother.”

The father of the 8-year-old boy, who was surrounded by pictures of his late child on Tuesday, stared in silence for some time.

Johnston stared back.

“I couldn't come to him, brother! I saw all of his last breath …”, a tearful velez recalled. “It should be, brother.”

Kaylah Smith, Javier's mother, argued that Johnston's actions were not a coincidence on this day, and instead he deliberately got in the wheel after drinking all day.

“You did that to him!” Smm called Smith during the hearing of the day and took a photo in which her son's overall vehicle slept.

Sometimes during the hearing, Johnston seemed to suffocate tears when he observed how his victim's family members addressed in court.

Johnston also spoke at the hearing.

Before reading the victim's family, Johnston's lawyer found that he had been crowned feelings of guilt since the incident.

“I know that you hate me and will never forgive me,” he said. “I don't accuse you. I hated myself for a long time.”

In his statement, Johnston said that he took responsibility for the crash and he took responsibility for Javier's death.

In the end, Johnston was sentenced to 15 years in prison – an term that was negotiated when he owed guilty at the beginning of this year.

It was a punishment that the public prosecutor of Atlantic County William Reynolds was “not near enough”.

“There is no person who would say that this would be satisfactory or sufficient,” said Reynolds. “Unfortunately, and we feel it all the time in our positions in which we make decisions and are bound to the law. And we are not happy about what the decisions are.”

Since the loss of her son, Javier's mother, Kaylah Smith, is working on the legislation that she calls “Javi's law”, this would keep a driver in prison immediately if he kills someone in a crash while he drives under influence.