A jury has found a Green Twp. man guilty of a deadly distracted driving crash that killed an 81-year-old woman.

After deliberating for about an hour on Friday, the jury found 29-year-old Lowell Horst guilty of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault. He was immediately sentenced to three years in prison on these charges.

Horst's license was also suspended for 15 years. 

The charges stem from a crash in September of 2022 that claimed the life of 81-year-old Mary Coss of Massillon. 

Horst admitted to State Troopers that he was watching sports highlights on his phone, which distracted him and caused him to cross lanes and strike Coss's SUV head-on with his pickup truck.

“At the end of this case, I just kept bringing the jury back to that and saying ‘Look, he’s the only witness that was there that’s still alive. He’s the one that experienced it and he told you what happened when he gave that statement despite the expert testimony that came in for the defense,” Steve Yacovone, the Columbiana County Assistant Prosecutor said. 

Yacovone hopes this will be a message to others to not drive distracted. 

“We want to avoid this situation any time we can,” Yacavone said. “I would hope that this may open somebody's eyes while they're on the road instead of pulling out their phone and looking at it, watching something, texting, they would instead pay attention.”

Another person in the SUV was also severely injured in the crash. That person died several months later but prosecutors only charged Horst with vehicular assault for that person. The Coss family has a separate civil lawsuit for the death of the second person in the accident where they are asking for more than $25,000 in restitution.