The State Attorney has put a date on the Cape Coral street race case: Anastasiya Zadorozhna will be sentenced on September 28, and the office has now told the story in its own voice

Anastasiya Zadorozhna will be sentenced on September 28, 2026 for the vehicular homicide of a 52-year-old motorist in a Cape Coral street race, the Office of the State Attorney for the Twentieth Judicial Circuit said on August 21.

The sentencing date is the first thing the prosecuting office has published about the case, and it answers the question this desk had to leave open when the verdict was reported on August 20, when no sentence and no sentencing date had been reported anywhere.

Gulf Coast News, reported by assignment editor Carson Zorn, carried the date the same afternoon, citing court documents.

Zadorozhna, 29, of Cape Coral, was convicted by a Lee County jury. Vehicular homicide is a second degree felony in Florida.

What the State Attorney's Office says happened

In its news release, the office says Zadorozhna was street racing when she crashed into another car, killing a 52-year-old man. The crash happened on July 19, 2024 in Cape Coral, on Pine Island Road. The man killed was Alberto Almedo, 52, who died at Cape Coral Hospital.

The evidence introduced at trial, according to the release, was video from a camera at Nicholas Parkway and Pine Island Road showing two cars travelling at high speed and racing each other. A short distance away, the office says, the defendant's car collided into the victim's car.

The release adds a detail that has not been on the public record before. Co-defendant Chase Magruder, who had been racing her, hit her car when she drove into his lane during the crash.

Assistant State Attorneys Martin Stark and Andreas Gardiner, of the office's Homicide Unit, prosecuted the case. The release is signed by Samantha Syoen, the office's communications director.

The other driver did not take a plea deal

Magruder, 23, of Cape Coral, pleaded no contest to vehicular homicide on August 18 and was sentenced on Wednesday to a year in the Lee County jail, followed by two years of community control and three years of state probation. This desk covered that sentence on August 20.

How he got there has been described two different ways in the coverage, and the State Attorney's Office has now settled it. The release says Magruder "pled straight to the court" and states that this "was not a plea agreement but the defendant's right to plea straight to the judge for sentencing." An open plea leaves the sentence entirely to the judge.

That is worth separating from what happens next. A defendant who pleads and a defendant convicted by a jury do not stand in the same posture at sentencing, so the year Magruder received should not be read as a forecast of what Zadorozhna will receive on September 28.

What is behind this brief

The sentencing date and the trial account here come from the prosecuting office's own public release, dated August 21, and are corroborated by Gulf Coast News the same afternoon. No court record was read: the Lee County Clerk of Court site refused this desk again on this run, as it did yesterday.

Two small conflicts are worth flagging. Gulf Coast News names the prosecutor Mark Stark; the State Attorney's release names him Martin Stark, and this brief follows the release. Gulf Coast News writes that Magruder was sentenced to a year in prison; the release does not characterise his sentence, and the account verified here on August 20 was a year in the Lee County jail. This brief stays with jail.