SANTA ANA – A repeat drunken driver who was about to be sentenced on three counts of second-degree murder for the alcohol-induced crash that killed Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and two others wept Wednesday as he apologized to the relatives of his victims and asked for forgiveness.
“I am truly sorry,” said Andrew Thomas Gallo, 24. “I want you to know I never intended to hurt anyone. I am not a bad guy. I’m not a horrible person. … I pray that one day you can forgive me and accept my apology.”
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Superior Court Judge Richard F. Toohey then sentenced Gallo to the near-maximum term: 51 years to life.
Gallo, who was also convicted of two felony counts of driving under the influence with injuries and one count of hit-and-run, will likely not be eligible for parole until sometime in the 2050s.
Toohey handed down his sentence after listening to poignant victim-impact statements from relatives of two of the people killed in the April 9, 2009, collision at a Fullerton intersection, and from family members of a fourth man who was severely injured.
Carrie Stewart-Dixon, the mother of victim Courtney Stewart, told Gallo: “The night you killed my baby, you killed me. … I have a huge hole in my heart without Courtney. I cry every day, and my heart is broken forever.”
Chris Stewart, Courtney’s father, said her death “created a wound in our family that will only fester with each passing holiday.”
And Betsy Wilhite, mother of Jon Wilhite, who was severely injured in the high-speed collision, said her son was devastated when he learned his three friends were killed. “Mr. Gallo, you put my son through hell.”
A written statement was submitted to the court by Adenhart’s family. Duane, Janet and Henry Gigeous wrote: “Our pain is not a state of being but a condition of life. We live with this hole in our family, our heart, our belief and our lives. No amount of words will ever fill that hole or in any way replace the loss of our dear Nick. Nick was beautiful. That phrase describes him best.”
Toohey also considered statements from Gallo’s parents and sister.
Thomas Gallo, the defendant’s father, called Andrew “a good son, a good friend and a good brother.” Then he turned to the relatives of the victim, and said, “my family prays for you all the time, and we pray that some day you will forgive us.”
The crash at Orangethorpe Avenue and Lemon Street occurred only hours after an Angels game in which Adenhart pitched six innings of shutout baseball. After the game, Adenhart and his friends headed to a nightclub in Fullerton in a Mitsubishi coupe.
They never made it.
That’s because at the same time Adenhart was striking out five Oakland A’s at Anaheim Stadium, Gallo and his half-brother were drinking tequila, beer and sake at two bars in West Covina.
Shortly before 1 a.m., a drunken Gallo sped through a red light in his parents’ Toyota Sienna minivan and slammed into a Mitsubishi Eclipse carrying Adenhart and three others as it was proceeding through the intersection on a green light.
Gallo was driving on a suspended license because of a 2006 drunken-driving conviction, and forensic tests revealed he had nearly three times the legal limit for driving of alcohol in his system at the time of the crash.
Three of the four people in the Mitsubishi were killed, including Adenhart, 22, a right-hander who made his major league debut in 2008 and had earned a spot in the Angels pitching rotation in 2009.
Also killed were Courtney Frances Stewart, 20, the driver of the Mitsubishi who was a former cheerleader at Cal State Fullerton, a sorority sister and a broadcast journalism major; and Henry Nigel Pearson, 25, a journalism graduate from Arizona State University, where he met Adenhart in a pickup basketball game.
A fourth person in Stewart’s car, Jon Wilhite, 24, a former baseball player at Cal State Fullerton, suffered an “internal decapitation” but survived. He is recovering from his injuries.
Gallo, who was slightly injured, walked away from the crash, leaving Raymond Rivera, his injured half-brother, sitting in the passenger seat with a broken arm. Gallo was arrested an hour later walking on the 91 Freeway.
District Attorney Susan Price accused Gallo of three counts of second-degree murder rather than the lesser crime of vehicular manslaughter under the legal theory of implied malice: that he knew that drinking and driving was dangerous to human life – in part because of his prior drunken-driving conviction – but chose to do so anyway.
Defense attorney Jacqueline Goodman contended that Gallo had no intention of driving on the evening of the collision because he thought he had a designated driver – his half-brother – and therefore did not have the required “implied malice” to convict him of multiple counts of murder, and should be held responsible only for the lesser crimes of vehicular manslaughter.
But Rivera got drunk himself on the night of the tragedy and handed the keys to the minivan to Gallo. Neither Gallo nor Rivera could recall how they ended up in Fullerton, according to police reports.
Testimony during the trial revealed that Gallo and Rivera drinking about 4 p.m. April 8, 2009, and continued to drink for about seven hours, consuming Newcastle, Amber Bock, Sam Adams and Arrogant Bastard beers, and at least one shot of 1800 Tequila.
“The original intention was not to get drunk,” Rivera testified at a preliminary hearing. “But I guess I got carried away.”
Contact the writer: lwelborn@ocregister.com or 714-834-3784
