In a Eugene courtroom, friendship was on display 

For three painful days, they bore witness: Friends and family of Sharon Schuman dotted the rows of Courtroom 306 in the Lane County Courthouse, listening to testimony.   

On trial was Scott Stolarczyk, whose SUV jumped a curb, crossed over a stretch of grass and hit Schuman, a violinist and former professor of English at the University of Oregon, killing her while she was jogging on the Amazon Trail. Stolarczyk, 52, was charged with second-degree manslaughter and driving under the influence of intoxicants. 

Schuman’s friends sat through jury selection and opening statements, the words of police officers, a forensic scientist, and disturbing photos of Schuman’s body after the accident, accompanied by the testimony of the medical examiner.

Thursday afternoon, the defense called witnesses, the jury members heard final arguments — and they returned a guilty verdict after about an hour of deliberations.  

In the Schuman camp, there was relief. 

“Justice occurred. I don’t have a question about that,” said Lynn Frohnmayer, 83, and a friend of Schuman’s for decades.

Frohnmayer was in the courtroom for every minute of the trial. “I think the verdict was absolutely correct, but I feel no joy in any of it. Just this enormous sadness and loss.”

She met her friend when one of her daughters, Amy, took violin lessons from Schuman. Frohnmayer and her husband, David Frohnmayer, former president of the University of Oregon, eventually lost all three of their daughters to a rare genetic disease, Fanconi anemia. 

Schuman joined the board of the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund and “went to all the science meetings,” Lynn Frohnmayer said. “She actually became an expert on this disease, and she raised $525,000 for my research budget.” 

It wasn’t about the money, though, Frohnmayer said. “We became hardcore friends.”   

In recent years, they saw each other several times a week, and if they weren’t together, they spoke on the phone almost daily. They went to movies, to the opera, to dinner together. They hiked and biked. 

“She was the most selfless person I’ve ever known,” Frohnmayer said, through tears. “She was amazing.” 

Jenny Jonak, another Schuman friend, was also in attendance, taking time off from her work as a business attorney. She met Schuman about 12 years ago. 

“I just wanted to be there in part to support the family and her other friends, and in part because it was such a devastating loss for our community that I really felt like I had to be here,” Jonak said. 

She found the trial difficult, mostly for the knowledge that if the timing of events on the morning of April 23, 2025, had changed by “even a fraction of a second, our community would not have lost this amazing person,” she said.

“I think all of us are just still grappling with the senselessness of the loss, to lose someone who was so talented and had so much to give and was so energetic. To see it all reduced to this is crushing.” 

Viewing photos from the medical examiner was particularly difficult for Schuman’s friends. Several put their heads down so they wouldn’t have to look. Others, previously stoic, cried in the hallway during a break. Some found solace in knowing that Schuman didn’t suffer. 

And Jonak chuckled while thinking that if it was any of them who had died, their friend would have been sitting in court. 

“Sharon would definitely have been here,” Jonak said. “Sharon would have gotten into all of the details. Sharon never did anything half-heartedly. So if she attended, she would have wanted to know it all. She would have really loved the science parts. That’s just the way she was.”

Steven Shankman, an English professor at the University of Oregon, lived in the same neighborhood as Schuman since 1985.

“We shared interest in Dostoevsky and in Shakespeare and in music and in politics and in life, and she was an incredible force of a human being, just an amazing person who was just doing good in the world,” he said. At 79, when she died, “she was just full of energy and life.” 

Kristen Bell teaches criminal law at the University of Oregon School of Law and was at much of the trial. She worked closely with Schuman’s husband, David, a judge and professor at the law school. David Schuman died after a cycling accident in 2019. Following his death, Bell got to know Sharon Schuman better. 

They cycled together and had meals together. When Bell’s baby was born, Schuman brought lasagna. 

Bell, like Frohnmayer, was feeling deep sadness. And also anger after “hearing the results of the blood analysis,” Bell said. Stolarczyk’s blood alcohol content was 0.196%, more than twice the legal limit, about 40 minutes after the crash, according to trial testimony.

“The role of having a trial is for the truth to come out, and we want that to happen,” she said.

Sharon Schuman, Bell said, “cared about the truth.”