A Kauai police officer was acquitted last week of negligent homicide in connection with the 2015 death of a 19-year-old pedestrian.

A Kauai jury on Thursday found officer Irvin Magayanes not guilty of second-degree negligent homicide in the death of Michael Kocher Jr. of Hanapepe. The officer was facing a Class C felony carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

“We’re happy with the verdict. We think that justice was done,” said Magayanes’ attorney, Craig De Costa.

“It was a difficult case and these are tragic circumstances,” he told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser Friday.

Kocher was walking on Kaumualii Highway near the Kaumakani Post Office on the night of Jan. 3, 2015, when he was struck by a Toyota Corolla traveling east. The driver stopped and police were called.

Kocher was still alive and lying on the roadway when Magayanes, responding to the accident and traveling at 75 mph, hit Kocher, causing fatal injuries.

Prosecutors charged Magayanes with negligent homicide in August 2015.

Kauai County Prosecutor Justin Kollar said the jury verdict was disappointing.

‘The decision to prosecute a law enforcement officer is not made lightly. The investigation in this case supported charges, and we did our jobs,” Kollar said.

During the trial, Kollar and his team argued that Magayanes was negligent in the fatality.

“We believe the officer was driving far too fast under the circumstances and disregarded a number of signs that would have indicated that there was a hazardous situation going on there,” he said.

There were vehicles on both sides of the highway with their hazard lights on at the accident scene and motorists honking and waving their arms to alert first responders to Kocher lying on the road.

De Costa contended the highway section where the accident occurred has no streetlights, which hampered Magayanes’ ability to see Kocher. He added there were no lights pointing toward Kocher and that Magayanes did not have enough time to avoid Kocher once he finally saw him.

Accident reconstruction engineer Rajeev Kelkar of InSciTech, a California-based engineering consulting firm, had testified the fatal accident still would have occurred had Magayanes traveled below the 50 mph speed limit.

De Costa also said the scene of the accident was nearly a mile closer than police and firefighters expected as they thought they had almost a mile more to go before reaching the location.

In response to the verdict, Kauai Police Chief Darryl Perry said it “was in truth an accident,” and that Magayanes did not drive negligently.

Perry added that Kocher’s death “continues to rest heavily in our hearts, and we acknowledge the deep sense of loss by the Kocher ohana. No words regarding this tragic event can ever take away their grief.”

With his acquittal, Magayanes is expected to return to patrol duty, Kauai police spokeswoman Sarah Blane said. He was assigned to administrative duties during the investigation and trial.