For instigating a crash- and injury-plagued night that a Lake County Judge called "nothing less than a horror show," Ronald Maas of Ingleside was sentenced to 22 years in prison Friday.
Circuit Court Judge George Strickland issued the sentence at the end of a long, tense hearing Friday morning and afternoon that featured testimony from crash victims and relatives of Maas, 20, who was convicted in a jury trial this summer of aggravated DUI resulting in great bodily harm and several other felonies related to a 2014 vehicular rampage across central Lake County.
Richard Clark, one of the most seriously injured victims in crashes caused by Maas during the incident, testified at trial he had suffered more than 27 broken bones, lost his job and savings as a result of the crash, and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression. He told Maas at the sentencing hearing that he had ruined his life.
"The pain in my arms and legs will never go away," Clark said as Maas looked at him. "I hate you for that, Ronald, I really do. I want you to understand that what you did I will never forgive."
Maas also made a statement, saying that he wanted to give his "deepest apologies" to everyone he had hurt, especially the crash victims.
He said that "the night this happened, I had a complete mental breakdown," having hit rock bottom in terms of drug abuse and personal crises. Maas added that he was using hard drugs in an attempt to escape his life, but when he came down, his problems and depression always returned "tenfold."
"I'm doing the best I can to be a better person. I'm changing what I can," Maas said, ending by asking for the court's mercy.
Although Maas was 18 at the time of the incident, Strickland said he had concluded Maas "cannot be rehabilitated" based on a long history of juvenile and adult offenses, probation violations, drug abuse and statements to probation personnel that were included in a pre-sentencing report.The charges against Maas stemmed from an on-and-off police pursuit throughout much of central Lake County on Nov. 13 and 14 in 2014, during which Maas was shot in the face by a police officer in the Round Lake Heights area but then drove through a barricade and continued to elude officers amid high-speed chases and several crashes, including the one that seriously injured Clark and his girlfriend.
Maas was convicted of aggravated DUI causing great bodily harm, illegal possession of a stolen vehicle, aggravated assault, attempted theft, criminal damage to state property and leaving the scene of an injury accident.
Strickland sentenced Maas to 10 years, which will be served at 85 percent, for the aggravated DUI, and a total of 12 years on the other charges, to be served at 50 percent. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys said after the trial the net result would be a term of about 14-and-a-half years in prison, minus the almost two years he has already spent in Lake County Jail.
Assistant State's Attorney Rod Drobinski had asked for the maximum 27-year sentence Maas could have received, while defense attorney Eric Rinehart had requested an unspecified "mid-range" prison sentence.
The pursuit began just before 11 p.m. Nov. 13 in the Round Lake area when police attempted to pull Maas over for speeding. When Maas fled, several collisions took place and he evaded a police roadblock, where he was shot. The chase culminated with a major head-on collision on Route 45 that seriously injured Clark and his girlfriend, who were in the other car, as well as Maas and a passenger in his car.
Maas was arrested after he left the wrecked, stolen truck he was driving on Route 45 on foot, and was located by police after he was heard "moaning" near a barn along Route 45 between Dada and Rollins roads, officials said.
Although he was bleeding from a gunshot wound to the cheek and had a broken arm, Maas was still trying to start up and steal another truck when he was apprehended and transported to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, according to police.
Toxicology tests taken at the hospital after his arrest showed Maas was legally drunk and had illegal drugs in his system.
A teenager who was riding with Maas during the chase and the crashes he was involved in testified during the trial that Maas had snorted heroin and drank at least half a bottle of rum on the evening of Nov. 13 before the pursuit began.
His mother, Lori Kyriak, said at the sentencing hearing that Maas suffered from a broken childhood due to serious domestic problems, that he first used marijuana at age 9, and that a divorce between his parents around that time deepened his problems.
Kyriak said she has seen Maas "evolving" in jail, trying to help other inmates with legal problems, and that she believes he will do the same for others when he is released from prison.
Rinehart said that while the judge had cited Maas' many chances for rehabilitation, those chances came at a time when Maas was in his early teen years and didn't have the judgment of an adult.
Drobinski told the court that when Maas crashed the truck on Route 45, he left his female teenage passenger in the burning vehicle as he fled the scene. Drobinski added that the "rampage" was due to a conscious series of decisions made by Maas, and that now he would have to pay for it, as would the innocent people injured and scarred that night.
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