Little Women Cast Member Sentenced in DUI Crash That Killed Coast Guard Member Picking Up Wife on Her Birthday

Elaine Aradillas
Updated

Former Little Women: Atlanta cast member Melissa Hancock was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in prison after she pleaded guilty earlier this year for her role in a fatal car crash, PEOPLE confirms.

Hancock, 26, admitted to four crimes in connection with the November wreck, court records show: aggravated involuntary manslaughter, driving under the influence, driving the wrong way and failing to obey a highway sign.

On Nov. 5, 2017, about 2 a.m., Virginia State Police responded to a two-vehicle crash involving a wrong way driver in Virginia Beach, a police spokesperson previously told PEOPLE.

Hancock was driving westbound on I-264 in the eastbound lanes when her 2011 Cadillac struck Daniel Dill’s 2009 Mazda head on.

Her “blood alcohol content tested at 0.112 percent two hours after the crash,” authorities told told CBS News.

Dill, a longtime member of the U.S. Coast Guard, was transported to Virginia Beach General Hospital where he died the following day from severe blunt force trauma to his neck and torso, according to the Virginian-Pilot. He was 29.

Dill’s wife, Natalie, had been celebrating her birthday with friends, Dill’s sister, Kelly Vazquez, told PEOPLE at the time. She said Dill arranged to pick his wife up so that “she didn’t drink and drive.”

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Dill was en route to get Natalie when Hancock hit his car.

“He was the type of man who would do anything and everything to help others,” Vazquez told PEOPLE last year of her brother. “Just recently he had returned from Puerto Rico where he was assisting with the hurricane relief efforts.”

At her sentencing on Wednesday, Hancock, who appeared on season 2 of Lifetime’s Little Women: Atlanta, described her remorse to Dill’s family and friends.

“Words cannot express my sympathy,” she said, according to the Virginian-Pilot. “I can’t believe what I have done. I could never mean to hurt anyone.” (Reached by PEOPLE, her attorney did not immediately provide a comment on her sentencing.)

Dill’s wife, his friend and five of his family members reportedly read victim impact statements about his character and the loss they suffered.

“He [Daniel] and Natalie made all the right decisions that night,” Dill’s friend Aaron Goh told the judge, the Virginian-Pilot reports. “She made all the wrong decisions. And yet they’re the ones suffering the consequences.”