On that sunny June day in 2008, Erik and Nohemy Hite were excited. Their daughter, Samantha, was two days away from celebrating her first birthday.
Erik Hite didn’t make it to to her birthday though. Nor the one after that one or the next or the next, Nohemy Hite told Judge Deborah Bernini Monday afternoon.
On June 1, 2008, David "Nick" Delich, 29, killed her husband, a Tucson police officer and retired Air Force veteran during a cross-town chase.
Samantha is the only reason she didn’t take her life in the many dark months following her husband’s death, Hite told Bernini.
And as painful as it is having to explain to her daughter why her daddy can’t pick her up from pre-school liked other daddies, Hite said she takes comfort in knowing Delich will never again be able to hurt anyone else.
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Monday was Delich’s sentencing hearing in Pima County Superior Court.
Delich, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia years before he killed Hite, entered a plea agreement that guarantees he will spend the rest of his life either in the Arizona State Hospital or the Arizona Department of Corrections in February.
He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and guilty except insane to two counts of discharging a firearm at a residential structure and seven counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Under the terms of the plea, Delich will spend the next 91.5 years in the state hospital. If, during that time, the doctors find he is no longer seriously mentally ill he will be transferred to the state prison to start serving a life term, with the possibility of release after 25 years.
Read more in tomorrow’s Arizona Daily Star
Contact reporter Kim Smith at 573-4241 or kimsmith@azstarnet.com
