Cody John Jazdzewski told the court Monday that what he did just over a year ago was not an accident, nor a mistake. He said they were his choices, his decisions and his selfishness.

Jazdzewski said he went into that night of drinking alcohol and playing billiards with an intention of keeping himself under the legal limit to drive.

Cody John Jazdzewski (Courtesy of the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office)

“But I played a game,” he told Anoka County District Judge Suzanne Brown. “I was arrogant. I thought that I was smarter. And I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

Jazdzewski, of Minneapolis, said he was ready “to try to make amends” for that night, when he drove drunk in his 1998 BMW convertible south on Central Avenue, lost control of the car near 39th Avenue and struck Carrie Lynn Rivero and her boyfriend, James Junior Beller. Rivero, 58, of Minneapolis, died at the scene. Beller, 63, also of Minneapolis, was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, but survived the crash.

Jazdzewski apologized, adding that “sorry will not fix this tragedy that I have caused, that I have brought onto their families. Forty-one months isn’t enough. Fifty months isn’t enough. A hundred months, a hundred years isn’t enough. There’s a life that is gone.”

Brown went on to accept Jazdzewski’s guilty plea to criminal vehicular homicide while under the influence of alcohol. She spared the 36-year-old prison time, giving him a stayed four-year prison term in favor of five years of probation and 364 days in the county jail, which he can serve on work release.

The sentence was a downward departure from state guidelines. Jazdzewski faced a prison term between about 3½ years and nearly five years; his criminal record was made up of two petty misdemeanor traffic offenses. Assistant Anoka County Attorney Mitch Schluter, meanwhile, had asked for a bottom-of-the-box prison sentence.

Brown said she found substantial and compelling reasons to depart — that Jazdzewski is particularly amenable to probation. She cited his age and clean record; that he is remorseful; has accepted responsibility; and is a “productive member of society.” She pointed out how Jazdzewski has completed treatment and maintained sobriety.

‘Gross negligence’

A State Patrol trooper dispatched to the scene around 10:30 p.m. July 13, 2023, found Jazdzewski’s badly damaged car up against a tree near a home. Jazdzewski, who had bloodshot, watery eyes and slurred his speech, admitted to drinking alcohol before driving.

A preliminary breath test showed Jazdzewski had a blood‐alcohol concentration of 0.131. The Minnesota legal limit to drive is 0.08.

Shortly after the accident, Jazdzewski’s BAC was measured at 0.137 by a laboratory, Schluter said Monday in court.

The accident was “caused solely by the gross negligence,” Schluter said, adding that Rivero and Beller were “merely walking on a sidewalk.”

The reconstruction report indicated 195 feet of skid marks leading up to the impact, and found that neither weather nor road conditions were a factor in this crash, Schluter said. “I think without a doubt there was significant rain prior, but these are experts that make conclusions … and that was their conclusion in this case,” he said. “The primary factor in this crash was concluded to be speeding and losing control of the vehicle. The secondary factor was alcohol consumption.”

Victim impact, statements of support

Rivero’s daughter, Elizabeth Rivera, told the court in her victim impact statement that she had spoken with her mother over the phone earlier that night. She said they talked about a spaghetti sauce recipe they planned to make and how her son and Beller also joined in on the conversation. “We laughed and joked, as we always did,” she said. “We ended the conversation with ‘I love you.’ And I told her I’d call her back.”

After days in a coma and having multiple surgeries, Beller was told his life partner of over 20 years was gone, Rivera said. He woke up with broken legs, unable to walk, and suffered for close to a year with medical issues and trauma.

“James passed away June 1st, 2024,” she then told the court. “I saw him just a few weeks before. He told me that he was trying to be strong, but nothing was the same without mom.”

Schluter said that although Jazdzewski bore no criminal culpability for Beller’s death, “he went into a depression and deteriorated because of this incident.”

Marsh Halberg, Jazdzewski’s attorney, said the accident reconstruction report calculated the speed at the time of impact at 26 mph. “One statement put them at 35 mph as he accelerated past his friend down the road,” Halberg said. “It was a soaking wet road. He hydroplaned onto the sidewalk. … He was over the (BAC) limit and he was above 30 miles an hour. But it’s not like this guy is blasting it at 60 in a 30 or something like that.”

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Halberg said that “two lives have been destroyed here, two good people are gone, and all of the people around them have this incredible heartache that will never heal to an extent. And I’m hoping the court will consider not sending (Jazdzewski) to prison so that a third life can do better in the honor of these people.”

Prior to the sentencing hearing, 49 people wrote letters to the court about Jazdzewski’s character. They included his wife; his father, who is a retired Duluth police lieutenant; his former coworker at a health technology company; and his friend who was playing pool with him at Jimmy’s Pro Billiards before he got behind the wheel drunk.

“I do not minimize or challenge the fact that he had too much to drink before he went home,” his friend Scott Dallman wrote in his letter to the judge. “However, I am certain that there was no intention of overdrinking by Cody on that night. Cody would not have driven, nor would I have ever allowed him to drive home if either of us thought he had drank (sic) too much. In fact, when we were served a beer just before driving home, we both took only one sip and decided not to even risk having too much to drink. We left without finishing the beers.”