A 23-year-old woman was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday for killing an Ellicott City woman while driving home drunk from a July 2010 pool party.
It was Alison Lesley Walsh’s second drunken driving offense.
“She’s young, however, she comes to you as a subsequent offender, we cannot lose sight of that,” Howard County Assistant State’s Attorney Claude de Vastey Jones told Circuit Court Judge Diane O. Leasure.
According to prosecutors, Walsh, of Owings Mills, had a blood alcohol level of .17 — more than twice the legal limit — when her 2005 Honda Civic rear-ended a 2005 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle as Walsh approached a red light on Route 40 at Marriottsville Road in Ellicott City at 8:10 p.m. last July 11.
The collision sent the bike across the roadway and into the median, killing Cecilia Ann Amato, 68, and injuring her husband Antonio Joseph Amato, then 74.
Walsh pled guilty to negligent vehicular manslaughter on Feb. 11.
According to Jones, Walsh completed probation for an unrelated 2008 drunk driving offense in Carroll County just six months before the July collision.
Cecilia Amato’s children, Tina and Joe Amato, said that the events of July 11 haunt them daily.
“We relive the alarming phone call. ... We relive the growing concern as we imagine our mother confused, injured,” said Tina Amato, 42, at the sentencing hearing Thursday. “Our loss is part of our family history and we carry it with us as we search for normalcy.”
Walsh said her life, too, had radically changed.
“For the past nine months my reality has been a nightmare,” Walsh said. “Mrs. Amato will forever be a part of me and I hope to make her proud through my sobriety.”
According to her defense attorney, Paul Mark Sandler, Walsh has struggled with alcohol abuse and clinical depression since she was 15. Her problems began, Sandler said, as a method of coping with her father’s unexpected death.
Sandler argued that the state’s recommended sentence, five years at a state prison, was too lengthy. He also questioned the wisdom of sending Walsh to the Department of Corrections as opposed to the Howard County Detention Center.
“Were she sentenced to life imprisonment, it could not undo the tragedy. Nothing could,” he told Leasure. “Look at this young lady and think about (her) problems, ... what happens to her when she goes to the Department of Corrections?”
He suggested that Walsh serve an 18-month prison term at the county jail, followed by a period of house arrest.
Jones, however, said that an 18-month term would not be appropriate, given Walsh’s 2008 drunk driving offense, and Leasure agreed.
“This is a second offense, and I can’t overlook that,” the judge said.
During the fall of 2010, two individuals who killed someone while driving drunk were sentenced to 18 months at the county jail, but neither had previous DUIs.
Jones also said that while Walsh may suffer from depression, that “should not overshadow” the pain of the Amato family.
Both children said their mother’s death was an unending loss.
Joe Amato, 45, told Leasure that his mother’s absence was also a blow to his 3-year-old son, Anthony, who spent countless hours with his grandmother.
“All of her focus and energy went into him,” he said. “Yet we have to worry he will have no memory of who she was.”
After the hearing, Amato said that sentencing guidelines for drunk driving deaths are not adequate.
“The bigger picture, for me, is that it just seems like people, particularly someone who has a previous offense, should probably get a stiffer sentence,” he said.
Walsh probably will serve only about one-third of her sentence and be released on parole, according to both attorneys in the case.
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