Man to serve 3 years for hit-and-run of Va. Beach girl

VIRGINIA BEACH

The doctors did not expect 11-year-old Kamryn Johnson-McCall to live through the night.

The crash had left her with broken bones and a swollen brain. A tube to the stomach delivered sustenance. Machines helped her breathe.

For days, doctors repeated their grim prognosis. Each time, Kamryn defied them.

Six months after driver Mark Richard Tietjen, 37, struck Kamryn on Lynnhaven Parkway and fled, she is back home, trying to regain her speech and relearn how to walk, her grandfather, Gregory Johnson, testified at Tietjen's sentencing Monday.

It was the first time Kamryn's relatives spoke publicly about the girl's injuries and the impact of the accident on their lives.

At the end of an emotional hearing, Circuit Judge Patricia L. West sentenced Tietjen to serve three years in prison and suspended another seven. Tietjen had faced up to a decade on the felony hit-and-run conviction in the case, but state sentencing guidelines suggested no more than two years.

Kamryn and friends were crossing the busy road near Green Run on the afternoon of Feb. 9 when someone dropped an iPod, according to a stipulation of evidence in the case. She turned around to pick it up, stepping into the path of Tietjen.

"If he had rolled up his windows and sat there," said his attorney, Bob Morecock, "there would be no criminal act."

Instead, Tietjen stopped briefly, then drove over a median and into a neighborhood - motivated at least in part by panic, Morecock said.

Tietjen has a 15-year history of traffic-related convictions, including multiple counts each of driving under the influence and reckless driving, driving on a revoked license, violating a restricted license and driving without a license.

After hitting Kamryn, Tietjen said, "I have never been more terrified in my life." He called his judgment that day "terrible."

"I would like to extend my most heartfelt apologies," he said. "If there was anything I could have done to trade places with her, I would."

Kamryn's aunt, Annice McCall, described receiving multiple calls from her brother while at work that day. She wasn't allowed to answer her phone, she said, but knew something was wrong.

At the hospital, doctors removed a piece of Kamryn's skull, McCall said. A tube was inserted into her brain to remove the gathering fluid.

The months that followed were the worst in their lives, McCall said. Kamryn was hospitalized for five months, half of which she spent in intensive care.

McCall described a series of photographs she brought of Kamryn before the crash - on her first day of school, participating in the city's Shamrock Marathon, on a trip to the beach - and after: the sling that got her from bed to wheelchair, tubes in her body, screws inserted in broken bones.

"She was everything I wanted to be," McCall said. "She was good at everything she ever did."

Kamryn made the honor roll at school, participated in soccer and other sports, and played the piano and cello.

"She says a lot that she'd like to have her old life back," Johnson testified.

Her friends will go off to middle school next month, he said. Kamryn probably won't.

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5131, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com