EL CAJON  — 

A motorist who fatally struck an 18-year-old college student in La Mesa, then fled and was arrested more than a month later, was sentenced Thursday to three years in state prison.

Scott Douglas Satterfield, 62, of Spring Valley, pleaded guilty to a felony count of hit-and-run causing death for striking Jok Joseph Jok, who went by Michal Jok, with a pickup on Feb. 27, 2021

Jok was found shortly after 9 p.m. lying on the eastern edge of the roadway on Bancroft Drive, just south of Golondrina Drive, according to La Mesa police.

A freshman at UC Riverside, Jok died in a hospital about a week later. He was the son of Sudanese immigrants living in San Diego. Jok’s father has said his son had an eye on medical school and wanted to study neuropharmacology.

Surveillance video captured images of Satterfield’s white Ford F-150 in the area at the time of the incident, police said.

Prosecutors said the truck was found more than two weeks later with a cracked windshield and other damage consistent with striking a person.

Satterfield was arrested April 7, 2021 at a motel in Mission Valley.

At Satterfield’s sentencing, San Diego Superior Court Judge Robert Amador said that per the prosecution’s sentencing papers, a person who encountered Satterfield shortly after the incident said he was “reeking of booze.”

The judge said he had “no question” Satterfield fled due to driving under the influence.

Per state law, Amador said the maximum sentence he could impose was three years in prison, and he told the defendant “you deserve all of it.”

Jok’s parents fled Sudan 24 years ago to escape war. At the sentencing hearing, Jok’s father, Joseph Jok, told the judge, “This has destroyed our family. I can’t find the words to describe the pain and anguish I am in.’”

Robin Stewart, one of Jok’s teachers from La Jolla Country Day School, said Jok’s death was “a loss to society,” noting what she felt was “the tenfold impact he would have had on our world.”