Two members of the Eastern community remember the students who were killed two years ago after woman responsible for the deaths was sentenced to eight years in prison Thursday.

Christine L. Miller, a former Sunset Hills, Mo., police officer, pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter and one count of assault in the second degree in December.

Miller was sentenced Thursday to two eight-year terms for each count of manslaughter and seven years for the count of assault, according to Missouricase.net.

The sentences will run concurrently meaning that Miller will approximately serve eight years in prison.

Priya Darshini Muppavarapu, Anusha Anumolu and Anitha Lakshmi Veerapaneni, from India, were earning masters degrees in technology at Eastern before they were killed.

Eastern faculty Peter Ling Liu, graduate coordinator, and Susan Drage, professor of technology, reacted to the Miller’s sentence after reading the sentence in the newspaper.

“The sentence makes no sense to me,” Liu said.

He said for the sentence of Christine Miller to run concurrently makes no sense to him, but as a layperson he said he does not pretend to know the justice system.

Liu said he knew the young women personally and helped them enroll in the masters technology program at Eastern.

He described the young women as excellent students.

Drage said the girls were a close-knit group and stuck by each other as they tried to make sense of a foreign county.

“They helped each other in a country that was unfamiliar,” Drage said.

Drage said as a parent she could not wrap her mind around such a sentence of only eight years.

Drage had Muppavarapu and Veerapaneni were in a class she taught and said the girls were excellent students.

The young women were traveling on Dougherty Ferry Road in St. Louis with two other individuals when Miller, who was driving in the wrong lane, crashed into their car on March 21, 2009.

Miller was reportedly intoxicated when she hit their car.

The women were in St. Louis for spring break visiting Nitesh Adusumilli, who was the driver of the car and sole survivor of the crash.

Circuit Court Judge Michael T. Jamison in St. Louis County presided over the case.

Elizabeth Edwards can be reached at 581-7943 or eaedwards@eiu.edu.