Man whose Crash Led to Md. Police Officer Losing Legs Gets Max Term

A driver responsible for a 2023 crash that left a Maryland police sergeant with the loss of his legs was given the maximum sentence Wednesday.

Raphael Mayorga was sentenced to 22 years and 60 days after he was found guilty in April of second-degree assault and other charges, WTTG-TV reports. He had been convicted in an Oct. 18, 2023, incident in which police had begun pursuing Mayorga after he was seen speeding, driving recklessly and doing doughnuts on the highway. 

During the chase, Montgomery County Police Sgt. Patrick Kepp was deploying stop sticks along Interstate 270 in Gaithersburg when Mayorga struck the officer. Mayorga was traveling over 160 mph at the time, and he continued until another set of stop sticks disabled his vehicle.

“(This) driver was really a menace, trying to bait us into chases at extremely high speeds, lights off in the middle of the night, all kinds of just very, very reckless and dangerous driving habits,” Kepp told OFFICER Magazine last year.

Following the crash, Kepp had both legs amputated, and after 10 surgeries, months of rehabilitation and learning how to walk on new pairs of prosthetic legs, he was able to return to work.

“What I had was, yeah, the loss of parts of both of my legs,” he told OFFICER. “But I was determined to come back to work … and be back to where I was before then.”