NC woman sentenced to prison time for killing Hillsborough teen in 2024 crash
Javontae “TJ” Brooks was the light of their life before a driver who was drunk and high on drugs slammed her car into him last year in Hillsborough, his family said Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court.
The 15-year-old boy died from multiple, critical injuries after being removed from life support Sept. 26, 2024, at Duke Hospital.
Monica Dove, 52, pleaded guilty Tuesday to felony death by vehicle and driving while impaired in the Sept. 13, 2024, crash. Superior Court Judge Clayton Somers sentenced her to 51 months to 74 months in prison — between four and six years — as part of a plea agreement. Dove will get credit for 418 days served in the Orange County jail.
Dove declined to address the court, but Orange County Public Defender Woodrena Baker-Harrell said in a brief statement that it was a “very tragic accident.”
Dove “has always expressed” remorse and concern, but “there’s nothing that can replace this young man,” Baker-Harrell said.
TJ, a student at Orange High School, was walking to a friend’s house along U.S. 70 near Central Avenue in Hillsborough when he was hit around 4:30 p.m. Sept. 13.
Dove pulled into a nearby parking lot to wait for police and told them she had swerved to avoid something in the road, hitting TJ, Orange County Assistant District Attorney Anna Orr said.
The impact knocked TJ into the air, and he hit the car’s windshield before landing on the ground, Orr said.
Hillsborough police conducted multiple sobriety tests, all of which Dove failed, Orr said. They also reported smelling alcohol on Dove and that she had red and glassy eyes, she said.
A search of Dove’s car found 20 Oxycodone pills — an opioid painkiller — and a white substance in two straws that tested positive for cocaine, she said. Tests later showed that Dove’s blood-alcohol level was 0.06, just under the state’s legal limit of 0.08 for impairment.
Family recalls TJ’s joy, laughter
An ambulance took TJ to the hospital with multiple broken bones, a punctured lung, and a traumatic brain injury, his mother Rarikanichie Brooks said. She arrived before he did, still wearing her pajamas and unaware of what really happened, she said.
TJ underwent two surgeries, developed pneumonia and had two strokes before they made the difficult decision to pull life support, Brooks said.
He was her “baby boy” and her “superhero,” she said, and they had planned a trip for his 16th birthday in October. His grandfather had purchased TJ’s first car, she said.
Now, he won’t go to prom, graduate from college, get his first apartment, or be a dad, she said, before turning to Dove to ask how she would feel if that was her child. Dove, showing little emotion, kept her eyes on the front wall of the courtroom.
“Every day, I have to wake up and look at his urn on my coffee table, and know that he will never be able to walk around and laugh and joke around, get on my nerves,” Brooks said. “You have really robbed everyone of a special life in this world.”
His aunt Bashante Rogers talked about how TJ had been caring for his father and showing a younger relative how to be a “mature young man.” Another aunt, Twila McLean, moved people in the courtroom to tears as she talked about his laughter and joy.
“You couldn’t go around him and not smile. You couldn’t go around him and not be happy,” McLean said.
They can’t forgive Dove, because she made “a conscious choice,” Brooks and other relatives said. It’s not just “an accident,” TJ’s grandmother Cheryl Satterwhite said.
“She deliberately made an adult decision, which caused TJ’s death,” Satterwhite said. “I’m going to pray for her every day that if she closes her eyes, she sees him in her windshield.”
