Too much of a bargain

I can't blame members of the family of the late Steven Fusciardi if they felt punched in the gut last week. The woman who struck him with her vehicle - and then didn't stop - while he was walking on Route 9 in Stafford last March got probation as the result of a plea bargain.

If she thought she hit a deer, like she told police, why didn't she report the accident that same night? If you think you struck a deer, wouldn't you stop to see if it was OK, or at least out of the road? But this woman waited until the next day. And at one point, she told police she initially thought it was a person. It was - a 43-year-old father of five. Less than a month later, the driver, Carol Ann Mancini, was involved in another accident, this time with her two kids in the car - and she was under the influence of alcohol.

She was sentenced for a combination of those accidents to five years' probation. If the first accident didn't warrant jail time, it should have when combined with the second. We will be writing an editorial on the sentence. Do you think because she has since addressed her alcohol problem, as her lawyer says, that should make even a short jail term unnecessary?