Woman Sentenced to One Year After Striking, Killing Man With SUV

A 31-year-old Greendale woman avoided a lengthier sentence after admitting to striking and killing a man with her SUV in Greenfield last October.

Josephine Sardina, however, will spend one year in the House of Corrections, followed by four years of probation. She was sentenced Wednesday, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Sardina struck and killed 54-year-old David Budge of South Milwaukee with her Cadillac Escalade. She was charged with homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle in January and faced 25 years in prison, but agreed to plead guilty to homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle, the newspaper reported.

Sardina told Greenfield police, according to the criminal complaint filed in January, she was traveling northeast on West Loomis road and that she saw Budge walking on the same side of the road but in the opposite direction.

She felt a thud and thought she may have hit a parked car, she told police. She looked back and saw Budge on the ground, stopped the car and ran to check on him but he did not have a pulse.

A witness told police it appeared Budge was trying to get out of the way of the oncoming Escalade before it struck him. The police investigation determined Budge was in a parking lane that was not to be driven on and that Sardina would have had to veer into that lane in order to strike Budge.

Sardina told police she was not on the phone and only used it to call 911, but a search warrant of her phone records revealed Sardina sent a text message and received and read another during the time of the accident.

Sardina’s blood was tested and revealed it contained a level of THC, the controlled substance in marijuana.