NE Iowa Driver Gets Probation for 2013 Fatality

MANCHESTER, Iowa (AP) — An eastern Iowa man has been given five years of probation for a 2013 car crash that killed his 23-year-old passenger.

Dean Dempster III was sentenced Tuesday in Delaware County District Court in Manchester. He'd pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide.

Prosecutors say Dempster had been drinking before driving in December 2013. He lost control of his vehicle on a county road east of Earlville and the vehicle went into a ditch and rolled. Dyersville resident Brittany Honkomp was killed.

Her parents, LaVerne and Joan Honkomp, embraced Dempster at the sentencing hearing. They'd told prosecutors they didn't want him sent to prison, saying their daughter also would not have wanted Dempster imprisoned.