Man who struck and killed beloved Lower Merion principal will not face jail time, New Jersey judge rules

The man driving a car that killed a beloved Main Line high school principal was sentenced to three months of house arrest and five years of probation on Thursday by a Camden County judge.

Azuka Ossai, 55, of Pine Hill, was behind the wheel of a Mercedes SUV the morning he sped through a stop sign in Winslow Township and struck an SUV driven by 51-year-old Sean Hughes, a longtime principal of Lower Merion High School.

Hughes died later that morning in the emergency room. Hughes’ 13-year-old son, who was in the vehicle with his father as he drove him to soccer practice, suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Police arrested Ossai last year and charged him with second-degree vehicular homicide and assault by auto.

Hughes’ family and former colleagues filled the courtroom of Camden County Superior Court Judge Yolanda C. Rodriguez for the sentencing. Addressing the judge before she ruled, they described Hughes, of Harleysville, as larger than life, a man whose motto was “character counts,” and who cultivated a respected reputation among thousands of students over 14 years leading the Montgomery County high school.

It was shortly after 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 21, 2021, when Hughes’ wife, Kristi, received a phone call that she told the judge will forever be seared into her memory. She spared few details, describing the mangled SUV with its airbags deployed and explaining how her son, Nolan, fought to stay conscious while telling a stranger the number to call to reach his mother.

Kristi Hughes recalled rushing from Pennsylvania to the emergency room at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where she found her husband fighting for his life, surrounded by a team of doctors. Machine alarms rang in the background, she said, indicating he was struggling to hang on.

“His heart stopped, and my heart broke,” she said.

Standing just several feet away in the cramped courtroom was Ossai, who looked down at his lap and held his hand over his face during parts of her testimony.

When it was his turn to address the court, Ossai’s voice broke and tears swelled in his eyes as he recounted the “darkest moment” of his life.

“I am deeply sorry from the bottom of my heart,” he said. “I’m sorry for the pains I’ve caused.”

Ossai’s attorney, Louis Barbone, said Ossai deeply regretted his actions.

“He’s confided that it does pain him every day, but that’s little remorse and little solace for the family — and he realizes that,” Barbone said.

As part of the terms of Ossai’s sentencing, he must perform 30 days of community service and pay fines.

Barbone told the court Ossai had already begun volunteering as a church janitor, and is working as a caretaker in a Philadelphia school to help pay back $5,000 in restitution the court ordered him to pay the Hughes family.

Hughes’ former colleagues, meanwhile, described the cavernous hole left in the Lower Merion community as a consequence of the loss.

Wagner Marseille, the superintendent of Wallingford-Swarthmore School District and a former assistant principal at Lower Merion under Hughes, said there were few people at the school who hadn’t been touched by the late principal.

“He was cut from a different cloth,” said Marseille. “In a world full of questions, Sean’s favorite question was to ask ‘How can I help?’”

Kristi Hughes recounted how her husband worked tirelessly with Lower Merion’s students all day and still managed to make it home to spend time with their three children each night.

“He wasn’t curing cancer or going to the moon,” Hughes said, “but developing future generations to do just that.”