NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A driver who was drunk when he struck nine bicycle riders near a Mardi Gras parade route in New Orleans in 2019, killing two, has been re-sentenced to 65 years in prison — down from the 91 years he originally faced.
A state appeals court has thrown out the original sentence in the case of driver Tashonty Toney. The appellate judges said Judge Laurie White didn’t sufficiently spell out the reasons for handing out the maximum sentences following Toney’s guilty plea to multiple charges.
Sharee Walls, 27, of New Orleans and David Hynes, 31, of Seattle, died after Toney repeatedly veered into a bicycle lane near the route where the Endymion parade — an annual spectacle of huge, brightly lit floats and marching bands — had just passed.
White on Thursday handed down the lower sentence after an often emotional hearing during which she heard arguments regarding the length of the sentence, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported.
“My pain and sorrow are not any less,” Walls’ mother, Lois Benjamin, said. “So many times I have screamed that I want to die. It felt like the pain, the loss, was killing me.”
A letter from Hynes' father was read aloud in court.
Toney also took the witness stand.
“Every morning, I try to look in the mirror — to look myself in the eyes — and I can’t do that. I get on the floor and I just pray to God that he give the victims and their families strength to get through their days. I ask the Lord to forgive me, too, even though sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve it.”
White acknowledged Toney's acceptance of responsibility. “Based on his negligence, two people’s lives were taken and he admits this,” White said. But “there’s no way that I can find a sentence that will make anybody really happy here.”
In throwing out the original 91-year sentence, the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal last year said appellate judges did not have enough information to adequately review Toney’s argument that the total sentence was excessive. The ruling called for a resentencing after a “meaningful sentencing hearing."
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