A Danville man will spend three to eight years in state prison for a drunken crash that killed his passenger on Route 283 in September 2024, after a judge handed down the state's mandatory minimum sentence this month. Apar Shirishkumar Patel, who lives on the 1500 block of 2nd Street in Danville, pleaded guilty in July to homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, homicide by vehicle, two DUI counts and four summary traffic offenses.
Patel was sentenced by Lancaster County Judge Dennis Reinaker, according to pennlive.com, which reported he entered his guilty plea without a deal with prosecutors. As WGAL reported, the sentence reflects the mandatory minimum under Pennsylvania's homicide-by-vehicle DUI law.
PennLive's account of the sentencing described Patel as 38 years old. That contrasts with an earlier case update from the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office, which listed Patel as 36 when he was initially charged. The dossier does not resolve the discrepancy.
A High-Speed Crash in the Dark
The crash happened on Sept. 8, 2024, when Patel was driving roughly 80 mph in a 2025 BMW SUV and rear-ended a tractor-trailer that was parked on the shoulder of Route 283 in East Hempfield Township, per the same pennlive.com account. A crash reconstruction later determined that Patel never saw the tractor-trailer, drifted onto the shoulder and struck it without attempting to stop.
The impact tore open the passenger side of the SUV. According to the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office, the collision caused the catastrophic failure of the passenger-side seat belt, and the station's report adds that the failure ejected 33-year-old Karra Clevenger into the opposing lanes of traffic. She was pronounced dead at the scene at 1:46 a.m.
A Shifting Story and DNA Evidence
Patel initially told police that Clevenger had been driving that night, but he later admitted he was behind the wheel after learning she had died, the outlet reported. DNA analysis also confirmed Patel as the driver. He told investigators that he and Clevenger had been drinking together in Lancaster earlier that night and that he could not remember anything after he began driving.
A blood sample taken from Patel less than two hours after the crash showed a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.134%, well above Pennsylvania's legal limit, per the same pennlive.com account.
What the Mandatory Sentence Means
Under Pennsylvania's homicide-by-vehicle DUI statute, a conviction under the relevant provision requires a minimum prison term of at least three years, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. The law also specifies that the state's standard sentencing guidelines do not supersede that mandatory penalty, meaning judges cannot sentence below the floor regardless of other factors in a case.
Statewide, fatalities in impaired-driver crashes fell from 429 in 2023 to 342 in 2024, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Nationally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported 11,904 deaths in alcohol-impaired driving crashes in 2024, an average of one such fatality every 44 minutes.
