A Pennsylvania man was sentenced to a state prison term following a crash that injured a passenger in 2017. P-J file photo

A Pennsylvania man is headed to state prison after pleading guilty from running from police, crashing his vehicle that injured his passenger, and then skipping town before his initial sentencing.

According to District Attorney Jason Schmidt, David Jenkins, 34, was sentenced by County Court Judge David Foley to one to three years indeterminate in state prison for second-degree vehicular assault, a Class E felony.

The charges were filed in November 2017 following a motor vehicle accident where a passenger in the vehicle driven by Jenkins suffered serious physical injury. Deputies with the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office had pulled over Jenkins, who at the time was a Jamestown resident, on a traffic stop on Route 60 in the town of Kiantone when he fled. Officers chased the vehicle, which went through Kiantone, into the city of Jamestown and later Ellicott. The pursuit included multiple police agencies and ended on Van Cobb Road when Jenkins’ vehicle crashed.

Jenkins was indicted by the Chautauqua County grand jury for vehicular assault, and a warrant was issued for his arrest after he fled the jurisdiction. He was located in Pennsylvania in 2020 and brought back to Chautauqua County. He pleaded guilty to the charge in February 2020 but failed to appear for sentencing, leading the court to issue another warrant for his arrest.

Jenkins was located once again in Pennsylvania in January 2022 and was returned for sentencing.