With his pregnant wife Danit Steinbach in tears beside him, David Hirsch looked at the man charged with blowing a stop sign and driving his car over their 4-year-old daughter, Maya, and told him the streets would be safer if he were never released from prison.
Minutes later, Michael Roth, 58, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of the fatal accident near the Lincoln Park Zoo last year and was sentenced to 8 years in prison as part of a plea deal with Cook County prosecutors.
Roth has been in custody since the May 20, 2006, crash. But with good-time credit, he could be released in as little as three years, authorities said. He could have been sentenced to as many as 14 years in prison.
“Sadly, Mr. Roth may even serve less time then the entire life of our sweet 4-year-old daughter,” Hirsch said in Criminal Court. “The thought of this man free on the streets, endangering people with his total disregard for their rights, feelings and safety upsets me tremendously.”
Hirsch read a nearly 15-minute statement before Judge Dennis Dernbach, who approved the plea deal. Many of the more than 30 supporters and family members wore red pins depicting a stop sign and the words, “Stop for Maya,” and they hugged framed photos of the girl as they wept.
At one point, Hirsch addressed his daughter.
“There are many times I just say your name again and again and again and again in my head,” Hirsch said. “I don’t know why I do this, but I do. I need to keep you close. I don’t know if it comforts me or it is a way of reminding myself that you are gone. You are so alive to me still. It is still so hard to believe that you, Maya, our beautiful sweet girl was so senselessly killed.”
Roth later apologized but insisted that at the time of the crash he did not even know he had hit anything. He said he heard only a dragging sound, drawing audible gasps from some in the audience.
Maya’s mother and 5-year-old brother were also struck by Roth’s car and knocked onto its hood, but both escaped serious injuries.
In his remarks, Hirsch said that during the year since the accident, he and his family have gone through a roller coaster of emotions.
Hirsch recalled that on the day of the crash, he, his wife, Maya and their two other children, Ben and Gabriel, had enjoyed a sunny spring day at the Lincoln Park farmers’ market. Hirsch took Gabriel, then an infant, home for a nap, while his wife and children continued on to the zoo.
“It was the most beautiful day of the year yet, and we were out enjoying the city and our family,” Hirsch said. “Michael Roth violently entered our lives and changed my family and each of us forever. He hit my family with his car, and he never even tried to stop.”
Hirsch said that at first he felt compassion for the driver of the car.
“I felt like the person that did this to Maya must be suffering and agonizing about his cowardly act of hitting a family with his car and then running away leaving a child, my beautiful little girl, lying in the street,” Hirsch said. “Ben, sitting in the stroller, and Danit are thrown onto the hood of the car, and little Maya, her hand torn from the safety of her mommy’s hand, gets the full force of the impact.”
Hirsch recalled that during each court hearing, Roth never apologized or even made eye contact with his family. He said that over the course of the last year, he has put aside his compassion for Roth.
He turned to speak to Roth, dressed in a tan Cook County Jail uniform. “The time for forgiveness has long since passed,” Hirsch told Roth. “You killed my little girl and drove away, leaving her broken and dying in the road.”
Speaking to the court, Roth used a cane to help himself stand up. In a low voice, he apologized to Hirsch’s family. He said he did not recall seeing a stop sign or even an intersection.
“I just want to say how sorry I am to the Hirsch family,” Roth said. “I thought about this over the past year, and I still can’t figure out what happened.”
In a rambling statement, Roth appeared to try to shift the fault of the accident, speculating that the family may have cut onto the road through bushes near the intersection. He also said that he did not realize that he hit anything and simply continued to drive on to his West Rogers Park home. He was tracked down a short time later after witnesses remembered his car’s vanity plates, “Ocean 21”.
Assistant Cook County State’s Atty. Cathy Sanders, citing a medical examiner’s report, said Maya, who weighed 34 pounds and stood 3 feet 3 inches tall, sustained more than 25 internal and external injuries and died of cranial cerebral injuries. As part of the plea deal, a reckless homicide charge was dropped.
Relatives of the girl hope Maya’s death will focus police on the importance of getting people to respect traffic signs, said Renee Hirsch, Maya’s grandmother.
In reaction to Maya’s death, the Chicago City Council stiffened fines for running stop signs and required that offenders appear in Traffic Court.
The family, which has filed a civil suit against Roth, said they plan to start a Web site, stopformaya.org, in the next several weeks to promote pedestrian safety.
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csadovi@tribune.com
