GUILTY PA - Nikkolas Poliak, 23, killed in hit & run, McKees Rocks, 9 April 2016

Ms. Mahone, 21 and a student at CCAC, wanted to take responsibility for her actions, which killed 23-year-old Nikkolas Poliak that night. But Mr. Wymard also knew that if his client was convicted of fleeing the scene of a fatal crash, she’d get a mandatory three years in prison. Mr. Wymard also knew police did not have enough evidence to link her to the crime on their own.

“Both Deria and her mother insisted on coming forward to answer for this,” Mr. Wymard said Wednesday at her sentencing hearing. They told him, “’The family needs to know what happened to Nikkolas. They need closure, and it’s the moral thing to do.’”

On June 10, already with a completed deal, Ms. Mahone turned herself in. In exchange, she would be allowed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter, a misdemeanor, and receive house arrest and probation.

On Wednesday, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Thomas E. Flaherty ordered Ms. Mahone to serve two years on house arrest and an additional two years on probation. She also is not permitted to drive for 18 months.

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Mr. Poliak’s mother, Alice Loose, said she was torn between accepting a deal with what she considered to be light punishment or possibly never knowing what happened to her son.

“She might have hit him by accident, but she intentionally left him laying there,” she said. “There was no way on earth she could have missed him lying there if she wasn’t impaired or distracted or driving out of control.”

Ms. Mahone, as well as her aunt and mother apologized to the Poliak family.

“We may not be grieving like you are, but we are grieving,” said her aunt, Azure Mitchell. “She’s a kid. It was not done intentionally.”

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