JW Fas

This is an exception and not the norm, but it is very satisfying to see someone who kills cyclists get a punishment that fits the crime.

https://www.nola.com/news/courts/art...2702caeb5.html

CB HI

Get caught playing the Judge as a fool and you can get slapped down pretty hard.

JoeyBike

Yeah, NOLA is a place where most people are driving drunk, but if you kill someone(s) in the process the results are never pretty. And I believe the drunk was the son of an NOPD officer. Or some local cop. Didn't matter.

Note To Self: NEVER ride a bike to/from a Mardi Gras parade where everyone is EXTRA drunk. The risks skyrocket.

livedarklions

This is about as extreme as drunk driving gets. He drove down a bike lane at 80 mph, mowing people down.

SwoozM8

Ugh ****ing drunk drivers

MikeyMK

That's not just drunk. No matter how drunk I ever got, I always had restraint towards people around me.

Drinking can expose some people's issues, but this guy has something in him where he doesn't care even sober. He was a time bomb.

rydabent

Great to see a proper sentence for a driver that kills cyclist. It rarely happens.

'02 nrs 

doesn't pay to have an attitude with no remorse.got what he deserved.thanks Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Laurie White!

Moe Zhoost

Man, that guy was a piece of work. Wanna bet that the sentence gets reduced on appeal?

livedarklions

Extremely doubtful.

Daniel4

Two deaths, seven injuries and damage to motor vehicles. It hardly looks as if the judge had any other choice.

However, I bet if only one death was the result and nothing else, he may have gotten a reduced sentence or just a fine as usually the case.

livedarklions

Given that what he did was to mow people down going 80 mph on a bike path, I don't see how that even makes sense. The whole point is that this was so extreme he was guaranteed to hurt and/or kill many people.

Daniel4

I'm sure we've all seen in this forum and other articles where the sentences or verdicts handed down by the judge don't make sense.

livedarklions

If your point is that if he hadn't killed and maimed several people, he would have gotten a lighter sentence than 90 years, well, duh.

greatscott

Wait, you got plastered drunk but showed restraint while driving towards people around you? Did I interpret that correctly? if not please explain what you meant.

MikeyMK

Where did i say i was driving? No i don't have to explain what i meant. Troll on or learn to read.

livedarklions

Yeah, it was a little confusing, but I took what you meant to be that this guy is so nasty sober that you suspect he wasn't just drunk, he was possibly intentionally homicidal. "Mean drunk" is a real thing, so you could quite possibly be right.

I took it for granted that part of your "restraint" is not letting yourself get into the driver's seat (or saddle) when you're drunk.

JoeyBike

When that bike lane was first painted I was commuting on it daily. For the first few months I saw many vehicles driving INSIDE the bike lane as if it were an auto lane. The roadway was 4-lanes for eons, then when a new surface was laid down the roadway lost the two outside lanes (became the bike lanes). I even saw taxis using the bike lane as an auto lane in broad daylight back when it was new. I guess this is some proof that the markings would confuse, or not be meaningful to some motorists initially.

So imagine a drunk driver who hasn't driven on this roadway since the new bike lane was added. He/she might assume the road is still 4-lane and stay to the right. Add to this a bunch of cyclists likely with zero lighting, or inadequate lighting, and/or dark clothing. Even a red steady-on tail light might appear to be a car a mile up the road. It is also common for drunks to forget to turn on their headlights. I have no first hand information about any of this, but I can tell you from LIVING in NOLA for 60 years that the odds of those "cyclists" concerning themselves about being visible on the way home from a Mardi Gras parade late at night is near zero.

My city is an idiot trap. And it is fairly efficient and unforgiving of mistakes.

livedarklions

Seriously?
He Was Going 80 MPH!!!

Darth Lefty 

but imagine it's common they might, likely, and/or be "cyclists"

livedarklions

By all accounts, the street was crowded post-parade. He was going to hit someone or something at that speed no matter what lane he was in and no matter what they were wearing. He basically plowed into a crowd.

JoeyBike

Not true. The spot where he started running over cyclists is at least one mile from the parade route starting point. The story as I heard it through the grapevine (third hand info may be total BS of course) is that the drunk was in a big hurry and auto traffic was all backed up in the single auto lane so the drunk decided to pass all of the cars in the right "lane" which appeared clear. There were no crowds of pedestrians. Only stacked-up cars in the auto lane, a few bikes in the bike lane, and a few pedestrians on adjacent sidewalks heading home who were unfortunate enough to have to witness the mess.

livedarklions

Well, the judge would probably know better:
"You've pleaded guilty here, and that is worth something. But you must have been blind drunk and unconscious in the car to speed down a busy street where bicycles and pedestrians (were) on a post-parade evening.”

JoeyBike

He wasn't so drunk that he slammed into rear end of the auto traffic jam on that roadway at the time. Auto traffic was dead stopped. He saw the traffic jam and decided to pass on the right inside of the bike lane that until fairly recently WAS an auto lane. It is a mistake I have seen motorists make at 9 a.m. on a weekday regularly during my commute, even rolling up behind me and laying on the horn because I was blocking the road IN the gahdam bike lane. I know that most motorists in NOLA are drunk at any given time or day, so maybe they were ALL drunk. I don't know. I'm just informing you that what he did is a common mistake. The fact that he did it at 80mh was the critical factor. Otherwise, that roadway would be littered with cyclist bodies on a daily basis.

I have no problem with the 90 years. There is a larger problem going on here. Everybody in NOLA drives drunk and/or distracted AND our cycling community is generally a bunch of regular people who don't use proper lighting, clothing, helmets, or anything other than street clothes and some cheap bike that is lucky it is operational. Or even borrowed. Cyclists get smacked down here on the regular, but during a high profile Mardi Gras parade exodus, it made perfect news fodder. Two years prior some drunk drove through the crowd at high speed as they were just WATCHING the parade and took out dozens of people. He injured 32 people, none died, so he got 5 years. So this parade had a history of drunk issues before this recent incident.