The teenage son of Iowa basketball coach Fran McCaffery will be sentenced Oct. 13 after being found guilty of failing to yield to a pedestrian, which caused the death of a jogger.
Jonathan “Jack” McCaffery, 17, faced that lone misdemeanor charge after he struck and killed 45-year-old Corey J. Hite of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, while driving home from school on May 22.
The Des Moines Register reported that under Iowa law, McCaffery faces a 180-day driver’s license suspension, a $1,000 fine, or both, at sentencing in Johnson County (Iowa) District Court.
The McCafferys, in a statement issued in July, acknowledged that Jack was the driver of a 2022 Hyundai Santa Fe that struck Hite, 45, of Cedar Rapids, but said investigators told them the accident was “unavoidable.”
Hite, a 27-year veteran of the National Guard and a sergeant first class, initially was hospitalized with a fractured pelvis, multiple skull fractures and holes in both his lung and kidney. He died June 4.
Judge Mark Neary, in announcing his ruling on Tuesday, said Jack McCaffery wasn’t distracted or impaired and that he was driving at or near the 35 mph speed limit when the accident occurred, the Register reported.
Neary determined that a mail truck obstructed McCaffery’s view and that he couldn’t see Hite in the crosswalk but should have taken more care before proceeding when he saw cars in the right-hand lane stopped.
“The court finds that a reasonable person approaching a marked pedestrian crosswalk with an obstructed view of part of the crosswalk should slow down and/or stop to ensure that there was no pedestrian or other entity entering the driver’s lane of traffic,” Neary wrote in his decision, per the newspaper. “While it is reasonable for Mr. McCaffery to assume the vehicles were stopped to allow a vehicle to make a right-hand turn, that was certainly not the only possible reason the vehicles were stopped at a crosswalk.”
During the Aug. 29 trial, the driver of the mail truck said Hite had been waved across the street by another driver but didn’t seem to check for traffic. She also said the size of her truck obstructed McCaffery’s view.
Fran McCaffery’s older sons, Patrick and Conner, played for him at Iowa. Jack, a 6-foot-7 forward is ranked as a four-star prospect by the 247Sports composite. He plays for West Senior High School in Iowa City and is the No. 16-ranked small forward in the 2025 class by the composite.
Last season, he averaged 16 points, 7.4 rebounds and 3.9 blocks per game.
–Field Level Media