Daytona Beach, FL – A Daytona Beach man involved in a fatal stolen van crash while fleeing from police will be locked up for the next 2 decades.
49-year-old Owen William Darr, Jr. was sentenced on Tuesday to 22 years in prison after entering a no contest plea to various charges in the April 2015 crash that killed 23-year-old Jamie Lynn Cain of DeLand.
Darr – who was on probation and in Volusia County Drug Court at the time of the crash – received 15 years in prison for grand theft auto, fleeing & eluding and habitually driving with a suspended license. The other 7 years are for violating his probation on multiple theft charges and drug-related offenses.
The South Daytona Police Department says Darr was behind the wheel of a stolen 2003 Ford Windstar around 10pm on the night of April 6th when an officer in a marked police vehicle spotted the silver van and 2 other people inside it in the parking lot of the apartment building at 2150 South Palmetto Avenue.
According to the arrest report, Darr accelerated rapidly and blew through a stop sign at the Big Tree Road intersection after the officer tried to pull him over, leading that officer to end the pursuit and turn off the sirens and police lights.
SDPD says it was soon afterward when another officer found the Windstar going 60 miles an hour around 4 blocks north from where the attempted traffic stop took place and watched the van fail to negotiate an “S” curve properly.
Officers say the van – reported as stolen out of Port Orange – hit the “S” curve there without slowing, leaving the roadway and hitting a tree head-on in the process.
Cain – a backseat passenger in the van – complained of stomach pain and was taken by paramedics to Halifax Health Medical Center, where she later died after losing consciousness in the ambulance while on her way.
Darr was also injured in the accident, as was another person in the van named Paul Wold. They were both taken to HHMC for treatment from the scene.
Police think neither Wold nor Cain were involved in stealing the van or even aware that it was stolen at the time. No charges were filed against either one.
Owen William Darr, Jr. (mugshot courtesy Volusia County Jail)
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