“Prison Break” actor sentenced for 2006 crash
LOS ANGELES - Actor Lane Garrison was sentenced to three years and four months in prison Wednesday for a drunken-driving crash that killed a 17-year-old Beverly Hills student in December.
“The public has the right to know that conduct such as this, causing devastation such as this” will have consequences, said Superior Court Judge Elden Fox.
“Unfortunately, in this case, you have to be the messenger,” he told the former “Prison Break” actor.
Garrison, 27, could have received nearly seven years in prison. He had no reaction to the sentencing and was taken away in handcuffs.
Before the sentencing, he apologized to the family of Vahagn Setian.
“I’m sick of my own behavior that night,” he said. “This remorse is genuine. I feel it every day.”
About 30 teenagers, many of them Beverly Hills High School students, packed the courtroom, some wearing T-shirts that had Setian’s photograph and the motto: “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”
“There are no winners in this situation, obviously,” Setian family spokesman James Lee said outside the courthouse.
“I wouldn’t characterize the family as being happy about this,” he said. “Vahagn will not come back.”
Garrison’s “Prison Break” character, David “Tweener” Apolskis, was killed off the Fox drama last season. The Dallas native’s other credits include the 2006 film “Crazy” and this year’s “Shooter.”
After the hearing, defense attorney Harland Braun said his client “was hopeful [of leniency], but someone’s dead and he’s alive.”
Braun said Garrison told him: “I’m the lucky one.”
Setian was a passenger in the 2001 Land Rover that Garrison rammed into a tree Dec. 2. Two 15-year-old girls in the vehicle survived.
Garrison met the teens at a grocery and accompanied them to a party. At the time of the crash, the actor had a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 percent, more than twice the legal limit, and was under the influence of cocaine, police said.
Garrison pleaded guilty in May to one count of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, one count of driving under the influence with a blood-alcohol level of 0.15 percent or higher and a misdemeanor of providing alcohol to a minor.
Fox imposed prison time and four years’ parole and ordered Garrison to pay about $300,000 in restitution to the victims and their families.
Material from Reuters is included in this report.