Left: Lydia Hanson (Carroll County State's Attorney's Office). Right: Richard Snyder (Fletcher Funeral Home).
A Maryland woman has learned her fate for driving drunk and killing a man one day after she was charged with DUI just a few miles away.
Lydia Hanson, 32, has been sentenced to nine years in prison, the Carroll County State's Attorney's Office told Law&Crime. She was convicted on April 1 of negligent automobile manslaughter in the death of 78-year-old Richard Snyder.
Hanson was also found guilty of DUI for a previous incident and received a suspended sentence of one year in prison.
On March 16, 2025, Hanson was driving a Volkswagen south on Route 97 while Snyder drove north in his Chevrolet truck, the prosecutorial agency recounted. Multiple witnesses apparently saw Hanson "driving erratically" and at speeds up to 99 mph.
Suddenly, she crossed into the northbound lane, causing multiple vehicles to "swerve to avoid being struck" by her. Hanson crashed "head-on" into Snyder's truck.
Maryland State Police troopers responded to the crash site north of Maryland Route 26 around 2 p.m. that day, they said at the time. Snyder was brought by an ambulance to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Hanson was flown by a helicopter to a regional trauma center. According to the Carroll County State's Attorney's Office, she "refused a blood test to determine her blood alcohol content."
Troopers, however, secured a search warrant for the test, and once they took her blood and tested it, they discovered she had a blood alcohol content of 0.34, more than four times the legal limit. Investigators also determined that the speed limit where she was driving 99 mph at the time of the crash was 55 mph.
"Incredibly, the defendant had also been stopped for DUI the day prior and within a few miles of where the collision occurred," prosecutors said.
The judge himself was critical of Hanson's actions.
"These are the worst facts I have seen in any of these cases," he said. "You didn't intend to kill the victim, but you did intend the behavior that led up to it. The day before you were arrested and charged, you would think that would have been a wake-up call to you, and it wasn't."
Snyder is remembered in his obituary as having been "a lifelong car enthusiast, auto body and fender mechanic" who "could take apart and rebuild an entire car, but couldn't quite get the hang of a remote to turn on his beloved car shows on TV."
He left behind a wife, who he was married to for 52 years.