After three years and five trial delays the man charged with the drunk-driving wreck in Spartanburg County that killed two USC-Union athletes will spend nearly two decades behind bars.
Yuriy Karpik has been in jail for three years, ordered held without bond shortly after the head-on collision in February of 2020. Prosecutors told the judge Karpik's blood alcohol level was nearly twice the legal limit.
His car crossed the centerline rounding a curve on Southport Road at a hundred miles an hour and slammed into a car carrying four women, all students at USC-Union. Two of them, both softball players, died of their injuries. Karpik pleaded guilty Thursday.
The judge sentenced him to the maximum twenty years for felony DUI causing death. That will leave twenty more years on top of his county jail time. The judge says he will have to serve at least fourteen of that followed by a decade of home detention and probation.