No Prison Time for Man Convicted in DUI Crash That Killed Wheeling Woman

By AMIE SCHAENZER (Patch Staff)

A 67-year-old Glencoe man was sentenced Wednesday to serve 36 months of home confinement and 42 months of probation for the 2012 DUI crash that killed Shurti Phandis, 26, of Wheeling, the Daily Herald reports.

But since a Lake County judge awarded John Warsaw 30 months of credit for time he served on a 24-hour curfew since the crash that killed Phandis on Jan. 13, 2012, he will only have to serve six more months of electronic home monitoring, according to the article.

Warsaw was also ordered to pay $1,000 to the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists and to pay $6,900 in court costs and fees.

The 2012 crash occurred when Warsaw crossed the centerline on southbound Route 22 in Lincolnshire and collided head-on with a Toyota Corolla in which Phandis was a passenger, the newspaper reports. Others in the car were injured but survived the crash.

Investigator Adam Hyde of the Lincolnshire Police Department told Patch Warsaw had hydrocodone, also known as Vicodin, in his system on the night of the accident.

“When you combine Vicodin with sleep deprivation and alcohol, it’s amazingly dangerous driving,” said Hyde. In an earlier press release, Hyde added that Warsaw “drove into a ditch and then struck a street sign on the median on Route 22 in Buffalo Grove” before the head-on accident.

Attorneys in the case said Warsaw suffers from life-threatening conditions that would make home confinement a more suitable sentence, according to the Daily Herald.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Phandis was arecent newlywed who had been married the day before the accident.

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