The woman charged with hitting and killing 17-year-old cycling phenom Magnus White was found guilty of vehicular homicide by a Boulder County jury Friday.

The case hinged on whether or not Yeva Smilianska consciously disregarded others’ safety when she chose to drive while tired and sleep-deprived that day. She, and her defense attorneys, admitted she struck and killed White.

District Court Judge Dea Marie Lindsey handed the case over to the jury at about 3 p.m. after a five-day trial and the jury deliberated past 9 p.m. before reaching the verdict.

“This is a case where you have to think with your head and not your heart. There is no doubt that this is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions,” defense attorney Timur Kishinevsky said in his closing statement. “Reality is: It’s an accident, despite being a tragedy.”

20th Judicial District Attorney Michael Dougherty called it an “incredibly simple, but tragic” case, saying that Smilianska took a substantial and unjustifiable risk when getting behind the wheel of her Toyota Matrix on the morning of July 29, 2023.

Dougherty charged Smilianska with vehicular homicide in connection to the crash on Highway 119 and North 63rd Street near Gunbarrel, where investigators said Smilianska’s car slammed into White and his bicycle.

White, a champion cyclist from Boulder, was riding on a paved portion of the road, training for the U.S. national team for mountain biking, when Smilianska crashed into him. White hit the hood of the car before Smilianska’s vehicle continued into a field, eventually striking a fence around 300 feet away.

Smilianska was estimated to have been driving around 60 mph, and White was going 25 mph, according to investigators. White died later that evening at a nearby hospital.

Investigators also noted that Smilianska didn’t attempt to break or swerve out of the way of White — not braking at all until she dropped into the embankment and hit the fence.

She also claimed to have not known she hit White, despite his body hitting her side of the windshield.

The entirety of the case consisted of proving whether or not the defendant made a conscious decision to get behind the wheel while knowing that she was placing others at jeopardy  — the definition of reckless driving.

Both the prosecution and defense agreed that Smilianska did fall asleep before hitting White, but it’s whether or not she put herself in risk of falling asleep through her prior actions that remained the question.

Deputy District Attorney Trish Mittelstadt said the defendant “consciously disregarded” various risks when getting behind the wheel of the car around 11:30 a.m. that day.

Prosecutors argued that Smilianska was up all night drinking after leaving her work — 3’s Bar in Longmont — around 3 a.m.

Karaoke videos showed Smilianska and her former friend, Nereida “Neddy” Cooper, singing and passing a cup of whiskey and soda back and forth at Cooper’s house around 6 a.m.

She also mixed the whiskey with her two bipolar disorder medications — both strapped with warnings of mixing with alcohol — around 3 a.m.

The two claimed to have went to bed around 6 a.m. and woke up around 11 a.m., though text messages from Smilianska’s phone showed she was awake around 9 and 10 a.m.

Cooper testified she told Smilianska not to drive and told her to either stay at her Longmont home while she went to work, or come to work with her and eat food and drink coffee. She did not believe that Smilianska was drunk, though, just tired.

Smilianska left the home around 11:30 a.m., texting Cooper that she was falling asleep around 12 p.m., despite stopping and getting food and coffee from McDonalds — something the defense said she did in order to reduce the risk of driving tired.

The crash occurred 30 minutes later.

“The defendant knows she was falling asleep,” Mittelstadt said. “She decides and makes the decision to get behind the wheel of a car and drive, passing completely out, killing Magnus.”

“She didn’t just doze off. She passed out from the self-induced exhaustion from staying up all night drinking and getting little sleep,” she continued.

The defense argued that the case was entirely around the consumption of alcohol, despite prosecutors claiming it was not a DUI case. Most of the week was spent trying to prove that Smilianska had drank a significant amount of alcohol before driving, though it’s disputable.

The six officers and two trainees who responded to the crash did not believe that Smilianska was intoxicated, deciding not to do a field sobriety test on her. Her blood alcohol level was never determined.

“We confessed from the very beginning: this is a case about being tired. Being tired is not reckless driving. It’s the epitome of what the careless driving statute is set to prosecute for,” Kishinevsky said.

The defense also argued that three of the four crash investigation experts brought to the witness stand initially believed that Smilianska should only be charged with careless driving. The fourth expert disagreed, claiming she should have received the reckless vehicular homicide charge.

The defense said that the initial investigators all decided on careless driving, with the other investigator deciding on harsher charges after investigating more into the night before — something that wasn’t necessary.

“There were months and months of investigation before they made that conclusion,” Kishinevsky said of the initial investigation pressing careless driving charges. “The problem is that was simply not good enough for the prosecution. That finding did not satisfy them,” he said, claiming that the prosecution hired the one private investigator to side with them.

The prosecution argued that the additional information, like cellphone data and videos showing her up all night, was crucial but not initially found due to the Colorado State Patrol likely being overworked. Smilianska’s phone was not taken at the scene, though it should have been, Dougherty said.

Furthermore, the prosecution pointed out Smilianska’s spinning of stories over the investigation, initially telling police that her steering wheel malfunctioned, causing the accident.

Four days later during an interview, Smilianska doubled down on the sentiment. She did it again five months later when meeting with her attorneys and the district attorney’s office.

All investigators found that there was nothing wrong with the car.

“She’s been running from it all along,” Dougherty said.

During cross examination, Smilianska also confirmed that her residency in the United States — coming from Ukraine — actually began in 2017, not 2022 like she had previously stated.

The defense did not mention the ongoing story holes in their closing arguments, but pointed to Smilianska’s testimony she lied because she couldn’t face the truth that the crash was her fault, and resulted in White’s death.

Dougherty said of White: “It was the light inside of him that he brought to his family, his friends, his community that we’ll never see again in this world because she killed him.”

A vehicular homicide conviction has a potential sentence of two-to-six years in prison.