Justice is supposed to mean fairness. It is supposed to offer comfort to the victim’s family, accountability for the offender, and assurance to the public that life is sacred under the law. But the recent sentencing of Daniel Lynn Ross to four years of house arrest for the death of 15-year-old Ashley Dorsey raises troubling questions about whether justice was truly served.
In 2019, Ashley Dorsey—a sophomore at Neville High School—was struck and killed while skateboarding along Park Avenue near Eason Place. The driver, Ross, left the scene. Detectives later identified him as the man behind the wheel of the white Chevy Equinox that took her life. Ross eventually confessed, and Monroe Police charged him with negligent homicide and felony hit-and-run.
That should have been the beginning of accountability. Instead, five years later, it feels like justice has evaporated.
Daniel Ross, who has a criminal history stretching back decades, will serve no prison time. His sentence of four years of house arrest offers him the comforts of home while a grieving family faces a lifetime of loss.
Ross’ initial bond of $1 million was immediately reduced to $20,000 bond. That’s a bond more suited to petty theft, not the death of a child. Where is the balance?
Court records reveal Ross’s pattern of reckless behavior: DWI in 2019, a prior hit-and-run in 2016, multiple traffic violations going back to the 1990s—including driving without a license and without insurance. His driving record shows a disregard not just for the law, but for human life. And yet, he sits at home while the community wrestles with the meaning of justice.
Judge Scott Leehy, who called this “the most difficult case of his career,” ultimately handed down a sentence that feels to many like a miscarriage of justice. One must ask—had Mr. Ross been poor and unknown, would he have received such leniency? Or if Ashley Dorsey had been a well-known figure or the child of influence, would the outcome have been the same?
There are no easy answers, but silence is complicity. We urge District Attorney Steve Tew to appeal this sentence and push for a review of what many feel is a gross under-penalization of a fatal act.
This case should be a wake-up call to lawmakers. We allow drunk drivers fancy sidesteps to avoid jail time, such as allowing a third offense DWI to be called a first offense. If the drunks are lawyers and powerful people, our hearts go out to them, but never for victims like Ashley Dorsey.
Ashley Dorsey’s memory deserves better. Her family deserves answers. And our community deserves justice that protects the innocent, not comforts the guilty.
