CANTON: A woman responsible for the traffic accident that killed Uniontown Police Capt. Dan Stiles early this year avoided jail time by pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of vehicular manslaughter. The judge found Sandra Boyes, 40, guilty of the charge in Canton Municipal Court, sentenced her to 90 days in the county jail and suspended all but 45 days of the jail term.Under Tuesday’s plea deal with the city prosecutor’s office, Boyes must spend those 45 days under electronically monitored house arrest at her residence, beginning Sept. 1.Her driver’s license also was suspended for two years, but Judge Stephen Belden gave her driving privileges to and from work and church during the entire suspension. Addressing Boyes as the hearing concluded, Belden called the sentence, in one sense, “symbolic punishment.”“The real punishment,” he quickly added, “is the memory that everybody will carry for the rest of their lives about what happened on that day. “I’m sure, Ms. Boyes, that you never had any intention of harming anybody.”Boyes, formerly of Uniontown, now lives in Akron, her attorney, Jeffrey Jakmides, said after the hearing.When asked by the judge if she had anything to say, Boyes declined to comment in court and she declined to comment afterward while conferring with Jakmides about the details of her sentence.Jakmides said Boyes expressed her sympathy to Stiles’ family and her appreciation for the community support that Jakmides said she has received since the Feb. 15 accident. Ohio Highway Patrol troopers said Boyes was driving a 2004 Ford Explorer when it struck Stiles, who was directing morning traffic at state Route 619 and Kaufman Avenue in Uniontown. Stiles was 46 and a father of three. He suffered head and internal injuries and died at Akron City Hospital three hours after the accident. Boyes told troopers at the time that sun glare hampered her view of the road and that she did not see Stiles until just before impact. After Tuesday’s hearing, Canton City Prosecutor Ty Hauritz said the government agreed to the plea deal because Boyes did not intend to hit the officer. “I think the sun glare played a major factor,” Hauritz said. Boyes, he said, had no record of any kind before the February accident. “Not even a speeding ticket,” Jakmides said. A first-degree misdemeanor charge of vehicular homicide was dismissed in exchange for the guilty plea. Hauritz said he discussed the terms of the deal beforehand with Stiles’ wife, Tiffany, and the officer’s mother, Helen Stiles of Hudson. “It’s a tragic situation for everyone involved, but they wanted to have closure without having a trial. This was the sentence they desired,” Hauritz said.The maximum penalties for vehicular manslaughter are 90 days in jail, a $750 fine and a three-year license suspension, Jakmides said. Boyes also was ordered by the judge to perform 200 hours of community service. She will fulfill that obligation, Jakmides said, at her church. The victim’s wife, Tiffany Stiles, spoke briefly in court, reading from prepared remarks.She told Boyes her husband was on the road directing traffic for only two minutes when he was hit. “You were not paying attention, and you killed him. Dan loved everything about police work, however, he hated with a passion directing traffic. The reason is because people do not pay attention when they’re driving,” Tiffany Stiles said.Jakmides said Boyes was not on a cell phone and neither was the vehicle’s radio playing when Officer Stiles was hit.A highway patrol accident reconstruction report indicated Boyes was going between 40 and 48 mph at the time of the accident, Jakmides said. A police report, he said, had her speed listed at 40. The posted limit in the accident area, he said, was 40.Jakmides said he was convinced that blinding sun was the reason the accident occurred.And two witnesses who were under subpoena, Jakmides said, were prepared to testify that they nearly hit an officer in that same area when they were blinded by the sun.If the case had gone to trial, Jakmides said he would have been confident of a not-guilty finding on the most serious charges.Tiffany Stiles said in a Beacon Journal interview late Tuesday afternoon that Boyes did, indeed, express her sympathies to the family.About two weeks after the accident, she said she received a card from Boyes “saying she was sorry for our loss.”“It would have been nice,” Tiffany Stiles said, “for her to say she was sorry in court.”Ed Meyer can be reached at 330-996-3784 or at emeyer@thebeaconjournal.com.