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“I wish this never happened. I wish I can change it,” said Yahya Ozkilic, 60, of Cliffside Park, before being sentenced to three years in state prison — a year of which he was given credit for already serving.
“It happened. It just happened,” the Turkish-born Ozkilic said through a heavy accent in the Hackensack courtroom. “It was a really, really weird accident.”
Park had just been reunited with her father, moving into his apartment after spending years in a foster home in Pennsylvania, and was excited about starting college from the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia. She had taken a part-time job at a nail salon to help pay for college and was enrolled in a martial arts class.
Jackie Park
The petite Park was carrying a load of laundry home July 31, 2012 when she was struck by Ozilic’s GMC Yukon XL on the road’s southbound side. She was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
Park was a happy, loving, vivacious woman, said her cousin, Christine, who spoke on behalf of the family yesterday.
“Jackie loved everyone unconditionally,” she said. “She was content being the altruistic person that she was. She had a cheerful disposition and made everyone feel happy and loved.
“Many a time I have had fantasies about pulling her out of harm’s way.”
Park also dreamed of becoming a famous dancer and of finding the mother who abandoned her, moving back to Korea, when she was still very young.
“Life is never easy for those who dream,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
“My uncle had to bury her,” Christine Park told the judge yesterday. “And much more: He had to watch her as she drew her last breaths and died in front of him.
“We as her family hope that while he is in prison, Mr. Ozkilic is able to reflect on what he has done. May God have mercy on his soul.”
It was a difficult case with no easy explanation, Assistant Prosecutor Martin Delaney told Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi.
“Unlike most of my cases, there were no drugs or alcohol involved,” Delaney said.
Ozkilic was “driving in traffic – and not a ton of traffic, flowing traffic moving south,” the prosecutor said.
“For some unknown reason – not that our investigation was able to discern – he pulled out of his lane of traffic, mounted a curb with his passenger side tires, and drove south along the road,” he said.
“At one point he drove over a small paved retaining wall.”
“Jackie Park was walking on what could be considered the shoulder of the road, even a private driveway,” Delaney said. “In fact, just south of the accident scene there’s a New Jersey Transit bus stop.
“Was it intentional? No. Was it reckless? Clearly,” the prosecutor said.
Still, he said, turning to the family, “what difference does it make to them? What do they care whether he meant to do it or not?”
Defense attorney Ron Bar-Nadev told the judge that his client was “the most remorseful defendant I have ever represented.”
“He is deeply regretful,” the lawyer said. “He understands the pain, he understands the agony.”
Bar-Nadav asked for no further time behind bars for Ozkilic, who has been held at the Bergen County Jail since the crash.
Ozkilic would compensate the family if he could, “but there is no way,” the attorney told DeAvila-Silebi. “Judge, you can look at him. He has taken it upon himself, self-punishment.”
DeAvila-Silebi agreed that Ozkilic was remorseful. He had no previous convictions, she said, and was not likely to commit another similar crime.
She also said that prison would be a significant hardship on his family — but emphasized that the law requires time behind bars for the offense, which was reduced from second to third degree as part of his plea bargain.
As a result, Ozkilic will be eligible for parole in about 15 months, followed by three years of probation.
Motor vehicle summonses issued due to the accident were dismissed as part of the plea arrangement.
Ozkilic had a valid driver’s license at the time of the crash, according to state records. But it had been suspended nine times — six for moving violations.
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
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