A Doylestown woman pleaded guilty to killing a mother of two while driving drunk last year

A Doylestown woman who caused a head-on collision that killed a 77-year-old woman in Cheltenham last year pleaded guilty Monday to homicide by vehicle and DUI.

Kaitlyn Dilemmo, 32, was sentenced to 9 to 23 months in prison and three years of probation in the June 2022 death of Jacqueline Kovach. Kovach, a mother of two and classical oboe player, died 10 weeks after the crash due to the major, debilitating injuries she had sustained, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors initially said Dilemmo was driving high on fentanyl at the time of the crash, and that her urine had tested positive for the narcotic, indicating recent use of it. But she pleaded guilty to “general impairment” Monday in Norristown after admitting she was drunk when she struck Kovach.

That lesser charge spared Dilemmo from the mandatory minimum jail time that comes with a conviction for driving under the influence of fentanyl. No blood test had been taken from Dilemmo after the crash, so neither her blood-alcohol content nor the amount of fentanyl in her system was recorded.

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Assistant District Attorney Scott Frame said prosecutors accepted her plea, rather than proceed with the planned criminal trial, as a compromise to spare Kovach’s family from sitting through what he said would have been a traumatic proceeding.

“From the very beginning, we were in close contact with the victim’s family and explained the issues in the case,” Frame said. “We felt, and the victims felt, that this was the best outcome in the interest of justice, getting significant jail time, without them going through a trial.”

Dilemmo’s attorney, Brian McMonagle, declined to comment after the hearing. Dilemmo made a tearful apology to Kovach’s family, saying she had struggled with addiction for some time.

“I don’t know why God made me this way,” she said. “I’ve been trying for years to fight this addiction I have. I just now need to focus on staying clean, so nothing like this happens again.”

» READ MORE: Norristown woman pleads guilty to homicide by vehicle while DUI in fatal 2019 crash

Witnesses told investigators after the crash that Dilemmo was speeding down Cheltenham Avenue when she encountered traffic stopped at a red light, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her arrest. She veered to the left, driving up and over a concrete barrier in the road and into oncoming traffic.

There, her vehicle collided with Kovach’s Subaru at a high rate of speed, sending both cars spinning, the affidavit said.

At the hospital, Dilemmo had seven full and four empty bags of fentanyl among her personal possessions, police said. She was also combative with hospital staff and tried to leave the hospital multiple times, behavior that doctors treating her told investigators was a common sign of fentanyl intoxication.

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Kovach remained hospitalized with severe injuries, including multiple broken bones and organ damage. She was placed on a ventilator and remained bedridden, unable to speak to her family, until her death.

Her son Joshua remembered his mother Monday as the keeper of their family’s history, with a “fertile and active mind,” and someone who was easily able to recall recipes and decades-old stories.

“She had so much life to live, so many memories to make, and now I can only imagine what she could have accomplished,” he said. “She didn’t deserve this. She deserved so much more. No one deserves to suffer the way my mother did.”

Kovach’s husband, Brian, choked back tears as he described how the death of his wife of 55 years has left him a shell of his former self, rarely able to sleep, eat or leave their home.

“I’m not the same person, and I don’t want to do anything without her presence,” he said. “I hope some restitution can be applied, to prevent this trauma from happening to anyone else.”