To the sounds of sobs in the courtroom, a Stamford woman who ran over and killed two men while driving drunk on I-95 in Darien in October 2010 was sentenced to six months in jail for drunk driving.

As Judge Gary White was pronouncing sentence on Candace Blanks, 43, of Bedford Street, Vera Chagas the mother of one of the men killed, pushed her hands into her face while crying and shrieked “You killed my son and you got only six months.”

According to court documents Blanks had been drinking with friends in South Norwalk until early in the morning on Oct. 16, 2010. As she was driving home to Stamford, Felipe Chagas, 19, a college student from Bethel, and Lucas Silva, 21, a Stamford resident and Greenwich High School graduate got a flat and were changing the tire on I-95 southbound between exits 11 and 10 in Darien.

At 2:26 a.m., Blanks hit the two with her black Lincoln Navigator, dragging Silva about 170 feet down the highway and slamming Chagas under the car he was working on.

Blanks pulled over on the highway about half a mile away. Police said her eyes were bloodshot, and she smelled of alcohol, was swaying on her feet, failed balance tests, experienced mood swings and urinated on herself. Blanks refused to take a Breathalyzer test and the state police officers processing her in Bridgeport said she asked to call home to tell her dog she would not be home that night.

Blanks was immediately charged with two counts of evading responsibility and vehicular manslaughter and a single count of drunk driving. But the state never filed the vehicular manslaughter charges, citing lack of evidence to support them. Investigators could not pinpoint exactly where Blanks struck Chagas and Silva – leaving open the question about whether they were on the shoulder or standing in the roadway when they were struck. Blanks‘ Navigator never hit any part of Chagas and Silva’s car investigators said.

The state’s case against Blanks was further complicated because state police, thinking that the case had already been settled, destroyed the car and most of the state’s evidence in 2013.

The prosecutor on the case, supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Steven Weiss, said during the early afternoon sentencing said during Blanks’ sentencing that in his 35 years in the prosecutors’ office he had this was probably the most tragic set of circumstances he had ever seen in a case like this.

“Tragic in terms of the consequences and tragic in the way the case was handled by the state police,” he said.

On balance he said a six month sentence was the best way to dispose of the case. In April, in exchange for pleading guilty to drunk driving, the state dropped the two felony counts of leaving the scene of an accident.

In a three page letter read to Judge White by Victims Services Advocate Katryn Doud during Wednesday’s hearing, Lucas Silva’s family said they were very unhappy with the way the troopers and state dealt with the case from the beginning.

“Three years and 10 months and 11 days later we are going to face Candace Blanks sentencing in court without understanding nor having any explanation for any of the coincidental incidents that happened throughout the case. We have to now be contented and come up with an answer to (all of Chagas and Silva’s friends and relatives) who consistently ask about what happened to the drunk driver who killed, fled the scene, and never cared to ask what happened to the victims,” Doud read from the letter.

Before Judicial Marshall’s walked over to Blanks, dressed in a light pants suit, to put the cuffs on her, Blanks said that she was sorry. In a voice cracked with emotion and sobs she turned to the Chagas and Silva families, who filled three or four pews on the right hand side of the courtroom, and said she was “heartbroken for their loss.” “I just want to say I’m very, very sorry,” she said before White warned her to speak to him not the two families.

For his part, White seemed to be unmoved by Blanks apology. After Blanks attorney Darnell Crosland said that the only reason Blanks was in court was because she had been drinking that night, White disagreed.

“I think your client deserves every day of this sentence that I am about to impose,” White said just before the cuffs were put on.