Lane County man gets 75 months for killing Eugene runner

Scott Stolarczyk will spend 75 months in prison for killing 79-year-old Sharon Schuman while she was out for a morning run on Eugene’s Amazon Parkway, a sentence that brought a long-awaited legal reckoning to a case that cut through the city’s running community and the University of Oregon.

A Lane County jury convicted Stolarczyk of second-degree manslaughter and DUII after a three-day trial, rejecting his account that he blacked out during a coughing fit and did not remember the crash. Along with the prison term, he received 45 months of post-prison supervision and lost his driver’s license for life, a punishment that reflects how seriously Oregon courts treated a fatal impaired-driving crash on one of Eugene’s most familiar recreation corridors.

Court records said Stolarczyk was driving a Toyota RAV4 when he veered off the roadway and struck Schuman on April 23, 2025, near the Amazon running path. Investigators later said his blood alcohol content measured 0.23 nearly an hour after the crash, far above the legal limit. A later sentencing report listed his blood alcohol content as 0.19. He was booked into the Lane County Jail on June 5, 2025, on second-degree manslaughter and DUII charges.

Schuman’s death carried weight well beyond the courtroom. The University of Oregon’s Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics described her as an accomplished musician, scholar, nonprofit leader, grandmother and force for positive change. The center and the university created a David and Sharon Schuman Legal Justice Fellowship in honor of Sharon Schuman and her husband, David Schuman, tying her memory to public service and justice work in a city where she had long been part of the civic and cultural fabric.

The sentence also lands against a broader public safety backdrop in Oregon. State transportation officials reported 603 crash deaths in 2022, 587 in 2023 and 539 in initial 2024 data, with pedestrians remaining among the most vulnerable road users. ODOT said pedestrian deaths in 2022 were 1.5 times the previous five-year average. On Amazon Parkway, where runners, cyclists and drivers share close quarters, Schuman’s death became a reminder that a single impaired-driving decision can leave a permanent mark on a community.

Oregon DMV guidance says some DUII-related revocations can be permanent, though restoration may be petitioned after more than 10 years under strict criteria. In Schuman’s case, the lifetime loss of driving privileges matched the scale of the loss her family, colleagues and fellow runners have carried since the morning she never made it home.