A Biloxi man was caught driving drunk 4 times. He killed someone’s son the fifth time.

Michael Joseph Kennedy drank a six-pack or so of tall beers, then stopped for another before he headed home for Biloxi on Interstate 10.

Robert Ivey of Gulfport was on the side of the eastbound I-10 shoulder near the Menge Avenue exit, filling the tank of a truck that had run out of gas.

Kennedy lost control of his Yukon, careened onto the shoulder and plowed into Ivey, killing the young man one month shy of his 22nd birthday. It was Kennedy’s fifth DUI and it will be his last for a good while.

Ivey’s mother cried as she tried to sum up, in a few short minutes, the son and brother her family lost the night of March 19, 2017.

“It took 6 1/2 hours for my beautiful baby boy to come into the world,” Ivey’s mother, Peggy Morgan of Hancock County, told a Circuit Court judge Monday. “It took the blink of an eye for him to be violently torn from this world.”

She described Ivey, as best she could, to Judge Roger Clark. He was a boy who played tea party with older sister Aryana and dug in the dirt with brother Timothy.

He took apart Hot Wheels with a screw driver and concocted his own “crazy” designs when he reassembled them. He loved cars and Cruisin’ the Coast. Most of all, he loved his family, his parents and siblings, plus his girlfriend and other friends he considered family.

“Robert was here for all of us,” his mother said. “All we had to do was ask.”

Kennedy said he was sorry about what happened. “It happened in such a flash,” he said. “ . . . I really don’t remember much.”

Assistant District Attorney Crosby Parker outlined Kennedy’s previous DUI arrests: one in Jackson County, one in Gulfport and two in Louisiana from 2007-15. He also was convicted in 2014 of grand larceny in Jackson County but given a suspended sentence and ordered to drug court.

Kennedy was a fugitive from justice for violating the terms of his Jackson County probation the night he hit and killed Ivey. Kennedy also had bypassed the interlock system put on his vehicle so that he could drive drunk.

His blood-alcohol level measured .13, while .08 or higher is considered above the legal limit for driving.

Clark said most people think about losing their license for a few months when they are arrested for DUI. They don’t stop to think they could kill someone.

The District Attorney’s Office recommended Kennedy spend 20 years in prison for causing a death while driving drunk, the crime he pleaded guilty to. The maximum sentence is 25 years.

Clark followed that recommendation, saying Kennedy would serve his DUI death sentence only after he finishes his 10-year sentence for the grand larceny.

“He destroyed our family and he still doesn’t own up to it,” Ivey’s father, Chris Ivey of Gulfport, told the judge. “He acts like he doesn’t remember.”

Anita Lee: 228-896-2331 or @CAnitaLee1

This story was originally published September 24, 2018 at 3:45 PM.