Heartbroken relations of the 2 14-year-old boys who had been killed by a drunk driver in a wrong-way drug-induced crash in Lengthy Island blasted the person accountable for slicing their lives quick as “evil” moments earlier than he was hauled away to jail.
Lots of of tearful associates and family members packed a Nassau County courtroom – and two overflow rooms – Friday as Amandeep Singh was sentenced to as much as 25 years for the deaths of Roslyn Center Faculty eighth-graders Ethan Falkowitz and Drew Hassenbein on Might 3, 2023.
“Instead of picking up my son at school, I had to identify him at the morgue. It’s inhuman torture,” Drew’s father, Mitch Hassenbein, stated in court docket – calling Singh “the definition of evil.”
“I’m a broken, bitter, angry man, filled with a dark side, and trying to navigate a foreign world. You ripped the heart out of our family. He gave my son a death sentence, and all of us a life sentence.”
Hassenbein was one among 9 individuals who delivered sufferer affect statements – lots of whom slammed the court docket for a punishment they felt wasn’t lengthy sufficient.
Singh was driving at 95 miles per hour in opposition to visitors on North Broadway – which has a pace restrict of 40 miles per hour – when he slammed his 2019 Dodge Ram into the Alfa Romeo Drew and Ethan had been driving in with a 16- and 17-year-old boy.
The 36-year-old was drunk and excessive on cocaine with a blood alcohol content material of .15 – almost twice the authorized restrict – with cops recovering a bottle of tequila from his truck.
The married father of two later fled the scene and hid behind a dumpster at a close-by buying middle, the place he was busted by cops. Prosecutors stated Singh was so drunk he thought he was in New Jersey.
“Amandeep Singh is not a man, he’s a coward and he’s a murderer. He deserved a much worse sentence than he received,” stated Zachary Sheena, one of many teenagers who survived the wreck that totaled the SUV.
“He never apologized once and took every chance possible to try and get out of trouble. He’s a selfish coward. Drew and Ethan will never be forgotten. They were the definition of perfect.”
Sheena, who now suffers from publish traumatic stress dysfunction, was behind the wheel of the smashed automobile. Drew and Ethan – seated on the correct facet in the back and front – took the brunt of the crash and had been killed immediately.
The opposite two had been injured within the crash.
Each of the slain boy’s moms spoke via their tears as they expressed their “hate” for Singh.
“You stole my heart and soul,” Ethan’s mother, Lynn Falkowitz stated, as Drew’s mom, Jaime Hassenbein, blamed the drunk driver for destroying her household and her son’s “bright future.”
“You took it all away, I hate you,” she stated.
Singh pleaded responsible to a 15-count indictment in January that included manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter, vehicular murder, assault, driving whereas intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident, amongst different counts.
Singh known as the horrific wreck the epitome of stupidity and selfishness.
“This was all my fault,” he advised the court docket, CBS Information reported.
“Losing a child is the greatest grief. I have committed the great sin. If anyone should have died, it should have been me.”