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HomeNewsArchivesJudge Sentences Williams to Maximum Jail Time in Vehicular Homicide

Judge Sentences Williams to Maximum Jail Time in Vehicular Homicide

Tears flowed far more freely than forgiveness Friday morning as Superior Court Judge Kathleen Mackay sentenced Karen J. Williams to the maximum imprisonment allowed of five years on each of two counts of negligent homicide to be served consecutively.

Williams pleaded guilty two months ago to killing 17-year-old Aliya Robles and 18-year-old Jolicia Wilson when she struck them and a survivor, then 18-year-old Shantina Garnette, in the early dawn hours of Jan. 22, 2012, on the Weymouth Rhymer Highway, just past the Donoe bypass intersection.

The three girls were out for a Sunday morning jog when Williams, whose blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, lost control of her speeding Honda Accord and plowed first into a stop sign and then spun around, striking a utility pole and the three young women.

Robles died at the scene and Wilson several hours later at the Roy L. Schneider Hospital.

Garnette, who has been left with serious physical complications, spent five months in the hospital. She carries facial scarring and a body full of metal she told a packed courtroom, Friday.

In pronouncing the sentence, Mackay summed up the two-and-a-half-hour hearing by paraphrasing one of the family members who had been allowed to directly address Williams: “This accident has forever altered the lives of everyone.”

Mackay said, “A sentence doesn’t fix the problem but we are a nation of laws.” She said, “We have to abide by those laws though they may not take away the pain and, indeed, may even cause more pain.”

Wilson’s mother, Kimbra Willett, and her grandmother, Lucia Henley, expressed forgiveness in varying degrees toward Williams.

Henley said that she had found freedom because of her ability to forgive. “I am free … Unless you forgive you are going to destroy yourself.”

She asked what good it would do to further punish Williams. After the sentencing, and outside the courtroom, Willet said, “It (the imprisonment) won’t bring them back.”

Garnette’s mother, Shana Caracciolo, said she had been angry when her daughter got pregnant at 16, so much so that she didn’t speak to her for eight months. But now that she knows Garnette may never be able to have any more children as a result of her injuries, Caracciolo said she was sorry she had treated her daughter that way.

Turning to Williams, who sat through much of the proceeding looking down with her forehead pressed against her closed fists, said, “I have to forgive you in order to be forgiven myself.”

But most of the nearly dozen family and friends who spoke expressed only deep sorrow, feelings of unmitigated loss and frustration that the law only allowed for five years in prison for each of the two charges.

“My four-foot, ten-inch daughter didn’t even weigh 100 pounds,” said Sandra Robles, mother of Aliya. She’s dead, Robles said, “because you were drunk.”

“There’s no coming back for my child,” Robles added.

She said Aliya’s younger sister, Aliena, who was 15 at the time, was waiting for Aliya to guide her – teach her to apply make up and advise her on which boys were good for her. That is not going to happen, Robles said, adding she wanted to see Williams locked up for her own good that she might not be able to drink.

“I want her locked up so she can get help,” Robles said. “You took my daughter,” she said. “I miss her every day.”

Garnette, a Tae Kwon Do black belt, along with providing details of all the ailments she suffers as a result of the accident – including severely limited use of her right hand, said she also carries around survivor’s guilt.

“To this day I don’t remember why I didn’t see the car,” she said.

Garnette, whose mother said she believes survived because she “had some meat on her bones,” had invited her friends to go with her that morning. She regrets it even now, she said. “I will never see them smile again,” she said with tears flowing freely down her scarred cheeks.

The fact that Williams may have used alcohol to mask the pain she experienced after the father of her four children was shot and killed in 2002 was not a good enough reason for leniency, Mackay said. The judge said it appeared to her that Williams dealt with her loss by “consuming alcohol.”

Mackay suggested that Williams should have sought help “long before she ever got in the car and struck those young ladies.”

Mackay said she didn’t know if Williams would be able to get help in prison, “But there must be punishment.”

A factor in the absence of much empathy for Williams was her failure to express any regret, sorrow or remorse, over the last two years since the accident. And even when she was allowed to speak in the courtroom Friday, her statement, “I am truly sorry; I take responsibility for what I did,” fell flat with the still grieving families.

In fact, the courtroom marshals asked a few people to leave as voices grew loud over Williams’ statement.

Only Henley offered any detailed concerns about Williams going to prison. “If you lock this woman away, the children will suffer.”

But the prosecuting attorney, Sigrid Sprotte, pointed out that Wilson’s son turned 1-year-old the day after his mother died. “She (Williams) should have thought about her children. She should have thought about a lot of children.”

Sprotte said that no sentence would make the mothers of the three girls feel better. “But five years doesn’t seem like enough.”

Defense attorney Vincent Fuller said after the hearing in a phone interview that he did not know yet if his client intended to appeal the sentence.

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