"This tragedy shouldn't have happened," Adacia Avery Chambers, the driver charged in the deadly Oklahoma State University homecoming parade crash, told victims and their families Tuesday as she was sentenced to life in prison plus 10 years.
"My prayers are always with the victims. I was suffering from psychosis that day," she said during an emotional plea hearing. "There are not words to express how sorry I am. If only I could change the past."
Chambers told the judge she was entering a no contest plea because she didn't want to put the families of the victims through any more pain.
Chambers' highly anticipated trial had been set to begin Tuesday with jury selection. Instead, the murder case was resolved with attorneys telling a Payne County judge that a plea deal had been reached.
Dozens of victims also spoke during the plea hearing, many saying they still suffer from physical and emotional pain.
Chambers, 26, of Stillwater, pleaded no contest to four counts of second-degree murder and 39 counts of assault and battery by means or force likely to produce death. Associate District Judge Stephen Kistler approved Chambers' plea and sentenced Chambers in accordance with the agreement.
As part of the plea deal, Chambers received life in prison as punishment for each murder count, those sentences to run at the same time. She received 10 years in prison for each assault count, those counts also to run at the same time. District Attorney Laura Austin Thomas noted that one murder count and one assault count will run consecutively or one after the other.
Essentially, the plea agreement is a 55-year prison sentence because a life sentence is 45 years, plus the 10 extra. Under current law, Chambers will not get out of prison until she is in her early 70s, if she is granted parole on both her life sentence and then her assault sentence.
Her attorney, Tony Coleman, doesn't dispute that Chambers was the driver who crashed through police barricades and into a crowd about 10:30 a.m. Oct. 24, 2015, at Main Street and Hall of Fame Avenue.
Coleman, though, had given notice that he planned to raise the question of mental illness or insanity at the time of the offense.
The district attorney after the sentencing said Chambers wasn't insane at the time of the crash and the case was not about mental illness.
By pleading no contest, Chambers' admissions in the case can't be used against her in any future civil proceedings, the judge said.