WESTVILLE, Ind. — A truck driver convicted in a 2006 crash that killed four Taylor University students and a staff member was expected to be released from prison Friday, a newspaper reported.

Robert F. Spencer of Canton Township near Detroit is being released about a year after his sentencing on charges of reckless homicide and criminal recklessness, the News-Times of Hartford City reported. The case drew national attention when it was learned a coroner had misidentified one of the students killed as one of five others who survived.

The daughters of Taylor employee Monica Felver, who died in the crash, said it was too soon for Spencer to be released.

“One second of him falling asleep, and we will suffer for the rest of our lives,” Hope Beckley of Montpelier, and Amy Atkins and Kelly Montgomery of Hartford City said in a statement released Thursday.

“Him getting out after a year, is a slap of more pain for us, but no time would ever have been enough time,” the statement said. “He has sentenced all the families to a lifetime of hurt, loneliness and complete loss.”

An official at Westville Correctional Facility could not confirm Thursday night whether Spencer was being released and said more information would be available Friday morning.

Investigators said Spencer had fallen asleep at the wheel after he had driven at least nine hours more than allowed under federal rules.

Spencer pleaded guilty last year and was given an eight-year prison sentence with four years suspended. Jay Circuit Judge Brian Hutchison could have sentenced Spencer to as long as 24 years in prison under a deal with prosecutors, but he noted Spencer’s remorse and cooperation. Spencer then received credit for good behavior and nearly a year already served before he was sentenced in August.

Spencer was expected to report to a Jay County probation officer and ask for his probation to be transferred to Michigan, the newspaper reported.

The judge also ordered the high school dropout, as conditions of his probation, to earn his GED within a year of his release from prison, to pay a $5,000 fine and to serve 100 hours of community service for each of the five lives he took. He also cannot drive professionally while on probation.

“I know I’ll have to deal with this the rest of my life,” Spencer said at his sentencing hearing.

Spencer’s truck collided with the Taylor van about 10 miles from the Upland campus as students and staff were returning from Fort Wayne on April 26, 2006. Taylor is an evangelical Christian liberal arts school of 1,850 students about midway between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne.

A coroner misidentified one of the students killed — Laura VanRyn, 22, of Caledonia, Mich. — as one of the survivors, then-19-year-old Whitney Cerak, of Gaylord, Mich.

The mix-up wasn’t discovered until VanRyn’s family realized that the woman they thought was their recovering daughter actually was Cerak, whose family thought she had died in the crash. Cerak has since recovered and returned to school.

Also killed in the crash were students Bradley J. Larson, 22, of Elm Grove, Wis.; Elizabeth A. Smith, 22, of Mount Zion, Ill.; and Laurel E. Erb, 20, of St. Charles, Ill.; and Felver, 53, of Hartford City.