A former New York City police sergeant who admitted she had been drunk when she crashed her car into another vehicle, killing a Manhattan doorman, was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison on Wednesday.
Tiffany Howell, 48, said she “desperately, desperately” wished she could change the circumstances on the January night this year when she drove the wrong way down the Taconic State Parkway and crashed her Infiniti into Manuel Boitel’s Toyota RAV4.
“I know that I made a terrible decision and I know that the consequences are irreversible,” said Ms. Howell, her voice shaky as she read from a prepared statement in Westchester County Court. She turned to the family of Mr. Boitel, who was 61 when he was killed, and apologized.
“I know I shouldn’t have consumed alcohol and taken the wheel and I’m so incredibly sorry that I did,” Ms. Howell said.
Ms. Howell pleaded guilty on Aug. 19 to aggravated vehicular homicide and second-degree manslaughter in connection with the crash on Jan. 22.
Just before the sentencing, Judge Anne B. Bianchi acknowledged the admission of guilt. But she noted that in the days leading up to the sentencing, Ms. Howell had told probation officers that it was a “nightmare” to have caused someone’s death.
Judge Bianchi called that comment “self-serving” and “superficial.”
“This is the Boitel family’s nightmare. This is not your nightmare,” she told Ms. Howell. “This is a situation you created and that you could have completely avoided.”
Ms. Howell was handcuffed following the sentencing in front of a packed courtroom, which included her husband, retired police officers and Mr. Boitel’s family and friends.
Ms. Howell admitted that her blood alcohol level had been roughly three times the legal limit when she got into her car that night.
At the time of the crash, Mr. Boitel, 61, was heading to his home in nearby Peekskill, N.Y., after finishing his night shift at the St. Tropez, a luxury condo on the Upper East Side. Ms. Howell was on her way back from a party with other officers at a cigar bar in Scarsdale, N.Y., for the Holy Name Society, a police fraternal organization.
Ms. Howell was suspended from the Police Department without pay on Feb. 2, following a police investigation. She resigned the next month, according to the police.
Prosecutors for the state attorney general’s office, which investigates deaths in which police officers may be at fault, had asked Judge Bianchi, for a sentence of six to 18 years. The maximum sentence for vehicular homicide, the most serious count Ms. Howell faced, is eight to 25 years.
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