AUBURN – A Sabattus man convicted of lying to police about a fatal snowmobile accident on Sabattus Lake was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in jail followed by one year of probation.

Robert Cyr, 35, pleaded guilty last month to a misdemeanor charge of hindering apprehension or prosecution in connection with the December 2002 accident that killed Robert Levesque.

Minutes before Justice Robert Crowley announced his sentence Tuesday, Cyr stood and faced Levesque’s wife and children.

He acknowledged that he made a mistake on the night of Dec. 29, 2002, when he chose not to tell police that it was his brother-in-law, Steven Davies, who drove the snowmobile that hit Levesque on the ice.

“But my main concern was trying to help your husband,” Cyr said, looking straight at Levesque’s widow, Patricia. “I am just saying from my heart that I am truly sorry.”

The accident

The accident occurred on a cold, windy night. Levesque, 59, was taking his usual walk on Sabattus Lake.

Cyr and Davies were together earlier in the night, then decided to take their snowmobiles across the lake to their family’s camp. Cyr went ahead of Davies and was already at the camp when Davies’ snowmobile crashed into Levesque at about 70 mph.

After the collision, Davies drove to the camp and told Cyr that he had hit something. Cyr drove back to the lake and found Levesque lying on the ice surrounded by snowmobile parts.

He put Levesque on his snowmobile and drove about a half-mile to Levesque’s home.

Cyr told Patricia Levesque that he had just happened to find her husband while riding on the lake, then he gave investigators the same story as he led them to the scene and helped them photograph the evidence.

Investigators didn’t identify Davies as a suspect until about six hours later when they found a piece of broken windshield showing a registration number for a snowmobile in his name.

By that time, it was too late to determine whether Davies had been intoxicated at the time of the crash. Without knowing that information, state prosecutors did not feel they had enough evidence to convict Davies of manslaughter.

Robbed’ of hope

Instead, the court accepted Davies’ guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge for failing to report the accident as soon as it happened. Davies was sentenced in July to 364 days behind bars.

Members of Levesque’s family have been outspoken about their belief that Cyr is as responsible for Levesque’s death as Davies is.

“You had a chance to be a hero. We will never know the outcome of a different choice on your part,” Levesque’s daughter, Michelle Lajoie, said to Cyr Tuesday. “By choosing to protect Steven Davies, you robbed my dad and my family of any hope.”

Patricia Levesque described seeing her husband as Cyr pulled up. He had blood coming out of his ear and mouth, and his legs were contorted, she said.

“The sight of seeing him still haunts me and probably always will,” she said.

The Levesque family has criticized Cyr for putting Levesque on his snowmobile and driving him back to the house as opposed to going to a nearby camp and calling police.

Unequal punishment

In explaining his sentence, Justice Crowley emphasized that Cyr did not commit a criminal act when he made that split-second decision.

“What Mr. Cyr did was deceive law enforcement at a critical time in an investigation,” Crowley said. “The haunting question is what condition was Mr. Davies in at the time of the crash. We’ll never know the answer to that because of the actions of Mr. Cyr.”

A veteran of the U.S. Navy and a former volunteer firefighter, Cyr could have been sentenced to up to 364 days in jail.

Crowley said he chose a much shorter sentence in part because he doesn’t believe Cyr and Davies deserve equal punishments.

“It is undeniable that the conduct of Mr. Davies was far more egregious than the conduct of Mr. Cyr,” Crowley said.

The judge also considered the comments shared by several of Cyr’s friends and relatives. One by one, they got up Tuesday and described Cyr as a hard worker, a reliable friend and a devoted father who continued to support his daughter after he and his first wife were divorced.

They shared stories of Cyr dropping everything to fix a furnace, a broken-down car and frozen pipes.

Family friend Sheena Foster told the judge that Cyr spent weeks building wheelchair ramps and new bathrooms at her house after she was paralyzed in a car accident.

“He has truly made a difference in my life,” she said.