EUGENE, Ore. -- In the days after the accident, Jakobi Mulgrave sat seemingly lifeless in a hospital bed with pins in his head.

When he finally woke up, he asked about his mother, Heather Mulgrave.

Was she in the wreck?

Was she going to visit him in the hospital?

"When Jakobi asked me, there was no place to go," his father, Hogan Mulgrave, said. "I went into the bathroom of the hospital room, I got on my knees and asked God to give me the strength to step outside and tell my son what happened to his mother."

Before Judge Jack Billings sentenced Matthew Ellmers to 20 years in prison for driving drunk and causing a crash that killed four people and seriously injured another, the court gave the families of the victims the opportunity to address the court.

Martha Whitman, whose daughter Nima Gibba died in the crash, asked to address Ellmers directly.

He turned to face her.

"Nima was my one and only child, a miracle child who when she was born was only given a 5 percent chance of survival," Whitman said. "She showed from the beginning a stubborn determination to hold onto her life.

"I will never see her dressed up for her high school prom or graduation," she said. "I will never see her walk down the aisle.

"As you pay your debt to society and all the times you feel sorry for yourself, remember your actions not only put yourself in prison but put me away as well," she said.

"Although there is a date you can look forward to when society considers your debt paid," Whitman told Ellmers, "my sentence is to suffer for the rest of my life."

In a prepared statement delivered by an attorney representing his daughter, Gibba's father expressed his loss.

"Why did we have to lose our little girl who had so much life ahead of her?" the attorney read. "We don't have have an answer.

"We won't be able to see Nima one day get married and someday have children of her own," her father wrote. "Nima loved kids and always talked about one day working with kids.

"She was the light of our lives," he wrote. "We love her and miss her very much. Her light will shine in our hearts forever."

"She had my only grandson. And she named him after me"

Ellmers turned to look at each member of Connie and Jaziah Vermilyea as they spoke.

Connie and Jaziah were killed in the crash.

Sandra Vermilyea, Connie's grandmother and Jaziah's great grandmother, said Connie, who served her country in the Air Force, had recently graduated from Pioneer Pacific University.

Vermilyea described how Connie helped her care for Connie's grandfather -- and how Jaziah would have grown up.

"I know Jaziah would have become a loving and caring adult," she said.

"Connie Marie Vermilyea was my daughter," Donald Vermilyea Jr. told the court, "my only daughter. And she had my only grandson. And she named him after me: Jaziah Don Vermilyea. I was really honored. I was so proud she wanted to give him my name."

Connie's stepmother Anita Vermilyea reflected on what she would miss the most about Connie and Jaziah.

"He loved to shop at Dollar Tree," she said. "He did chores to get money to go every day."

She also finished reading a statement Donald Vermilyea Jr. wrote but was too overcome with grief to finish reading. In the statement, he reflected on the toll the crash had on Ellmers -- and what he wanted from him in the future.

"Not only did he destroy five lives in the other vehicle," he wrote, "he also ruined his girlfriend's life and his family's lives as well. In a way, they are as much victims as we are.

"We pray that, if you are truly remorseful, then you will feel that something truly wonderful and good must come from this," he wrote to Ellmers. "I want you to personally save five new lives for the ones you destroyed."

"She completely held our family together"

The sentencing came less than two days after the students at Body and Soul Dance Studio in Springfield, Ore., held a recital in memory of their teacher, Heather Mulgrave, who died in the crash.

Mulgrave's mother was too overcome with emotion to address the court.

Mulgrave's younger brother Michael McInerney showed the court pictures of Heather and Jakobi in Disney World and of the family together on a porch.

"We are only a few years out from my father dying," he said. "It was difficult on Jakobi. He had basically just worked his way through it. Soon after, the accident happened."

McInerney said Mulgrave  was "really big on keeping everyone in the family connected."

"She completely held our family together," he said, recalling that, when he lived in Missouri, "she would buy my flight out and make me come back out."

He told the court about his nephew's recovery in the hospital.

"Dealing with Jakobi being the hospital was incredibly difficult," he told the court. "We would go there and see him strastrapped down on the bed. and it was obvious he was in extreme pain and agony. While we did that, we would have to travel from Portland back down to Eugene so we could deal with my sister's service, knowing Jakobi wasn't there and would never get to see the service.

"Everytime we would go to Portland," McInerney said, "we would have to retell him his mom would die, and we would have to retell him about the accident. The next day, he would forget and we would have to go through it again."

Jakobi Mulgrave now has good days and bad days, his father told the court.

"He moans for her, he does," Hogan Mulgrave said. "He misses her so much."

But there was that day, the day when his young son opened his eyes and asked for his mother.

"When I told my son what happened to his mother," Mulgrave said, "it was ... he not only cried, he shaked. He shaked in my arms."

After a few minutes, Jakobi fell aleep in his father's arms.

And when he woke up, his father said, Jakobi had to process the news again.