Michael J. O’Connor, a repeat drunken driver, tearfully said Thursday he hopes his jail sentence for second-degree vehicular manslaughter after a Buffalo Bills game will send a message to others not to drink and drive.

O’Connor, 23, of Telegraph Road, Bliss, told the judge and relatives of the late Thomas Hajduk that he wanted other drivers to “please learn from my mistakes.”

Under a plea deal approved by Hajduk’s relatives, State Supreme Court Justice Christopher J. Burns ordered O’Connor, who had been free on bail, to spend up to 12 months in the Erie County Correctional Facility for his Oct. 16 guilty plea.

O’Connor had faced trial for fatally injuring Hajduk, 51, while the industrial engineer and musician was walking near his Aurora Street home in Lancaster at about 5:30 p.m. Nov. 2, 2008.

He apparently had just dropped off some friends in Lancaster after the Bills game before hitting Hajduk with his Jeep SUV.

During Thursday’s sentencing, Robin Bacon and Mark Hajduk, the victim’s sister and brother, told the judge how their brother’s death has devastated their family, especially their elderly mother, who Bacon said “will never recover from the death of her son” and best friend.

Hajduk noted that O’Connor “had a chance” in an earlier drunken driving case when a Sheldon town judge in Wyoming County merely fined him several hundred dollars and let him plead guilty to driving while impaired by alcohol in the summer of 2006.

Burns, stressing that the jail term had been “agreeable to all sides” in the case, said no sentence he could impose would be adequate and even “100 years wouldn’t be enough” to satisfy the “anger and sorrow” of the loved ones of a drunken driving victim.

O’Connor, who also was fined $570, will remain behind bars for the next eight months under state sentencing mandates.

After the sentencing, defense lawyer Frank LoTempio III said that his client was “very remorseful” and that when he gets out of custody, he will resume the professional counseling he had been getting since the fatal incident.

Prosecutors said O’Connor had a blood-alcohol reading of 0.09 percent two hours after the accident. The legal limit is 0.08.

mgryta@buffnews.comnull