Driver of stolen car gets 20 years in fatal hit-and-run

A Milwaukee drug dealer was sentenced to prison Thursday for his last drive — a fatal hit-and-run crash as he fled police in a stolen Jeep.

Sean McNutt, 25, will spend 20 1/2 years in prison and almost 14 more on extended supervision on six convictions related to the March 26 crash that killed one man and injured four others in a minivan transporting disabled adults to a group home. McNutt had T-boned the vehicle near N. 10th St. and W. Abert Place.

Henry Bailey, 66, died from his injuries. The other group home residents, on their way home to Brookfield after a visit to Lake Michigan, were seriously injured. The driver was also injured, but less severely.

Assistant District Attorney Karl Hayes said the case epitomized one of Milwaukee’s most pressing ongoing crime problems.

“He’s simply another drug dealer who prefers to conduct business from a stolen car while playing hide and seek with police and exposing the community to grave risk and harm,” Hayes told Circuit Judge Jeffrey Wagner.

At the time of the crash, McNutt was free on bail on a serious 2015 cocaine and heroin trafficking charge. He has since been convicted in that case and sentenced to six years in prison. Wagner made Thursday’s sentence consecutive to that.

In recommending the maximum five years for a conviction on a count of bail jumping, Hayes called it a “stupifyingly serious” offense, “one for the books.”

Through his attorney Dianne Erickson, McNutt — who denies he was driving the Jeep — asked for a total term of 10 years, concurrent to his earlier drug sentence, which he felt was unfair for his first felony conviction.

“It’s eating me up inside. I’ve got kids,” he said, two daughters ages 7 and not yet 1. “I missed my baby’s first Christmas. I’m missing out on everything.”

Wagner said if McNutt had much concern for his kids, he might have been thinking of them while driving recklessly in someone else’s car while on bail.

One of McNutt’s bail conditions in the drug case was that he not have contact with his brother Ciyon McNutt, 21, who police say was in the front passenger seat during the crash. They, along with backseat passengers, a 15-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, all ran from the scene after the Jeep Cherokee slammed into a house.

The girl suffered a broken leg and she and the 15-year-old were found a couple blocks from the crash. McNutt was arrested about a week later.

The boy told police he had urged McNutt to slow down because the boy had been a passenger in a stolen car once before that was involved in a fatal crash.

A jury found McNutt guilty in November of hit and run causing death, three counts of hit and run causing serious injury, driving a car without the owner’s consent and bail jumping.