via GoFundMe page
A longtime Upper East Side doorman was killed by a wrong-way drunk driver in January. On Wednesday his family faced the former NYPD sergeant responsible in court, moments before a judge sentenced her to prison.
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Tiffany Howell, 48, was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison in Westchester County Court on October 28 for the crash that killed Manuel Boitel, 61, The New York Times reported. Howell had pleaded guilty in August to aggravated vehicular homicide and second-degree manslaughter.Boitel had worked the door at the St. Tropez condominium at 340 East 64th Street for three decades. On January 22 he was driving home to Peekskill after a night shift. Prosecutors with the New York Attorney General’s Office say Howell was driving south in the northbound lanes of the Taconic State Parkway when she hit his car head-on. They said her blood alcohol content was at least 0.18, more than twice the legal limit.
Prosecutors had asked Judge Anne B. Bianchi for a sentence of six to 18 years. She instead granted the defense’s request for four to 12 years after Howell waived her right to a trial and agreed not to appeal, according to the Times. The most serious charge carried up to 25 years.
Before the sentence was handed down, Howell read a prepared statement and apologized to Boitel’s family. “I know that I made a terrible decision and I know that the consequences are irreversible,” she said.
Judge Bianchi said Howell had taken responsibility for her actions. But she criticized Howell for telling probation officers that causing someone’s death had been a “nightmare,” calling the remark “self-absorbed.” “This is the Boitel family’s nightmare,” the judge told her. “This is not your nightmare.”
Boitel’s family spoke before the sentencing and said the punishment was far too light. His son Marvin, 37, cried as he spoke to Howell directly. “Tiffany Howell, you killed my father,” he said.
His wife of 42 years, Marisol Cabrera Boitel, spoke in Spanish. She said she wondered whether the sentence reflected the fact that Howell was a police officer at the time of the crash. “I believe four years is nothing for a woman who caused so much pain,” she said.
His other son, Eric, 33, told the court that his father had always wanted to be a police officer and had donated to a police association. He said being killed by a member of an organization his father admired so much “just feels horrible.”
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Howell’s lawyer, Andrew Quinn, submitted dozens of support letters from her children, her husband, and current and retired police officers. He argued that her actions that night went against the way she’d lived her life. Howell served 18 years in the NYPD. She was handcuffed after the sentencing in a packed courtroom that included her husband, retired police officers, and Boitel’s family and friends.Prosecutors have said Howell spent the evening before the crash at a Holy Name Society party she hosted at a Scarsdale cigar bar. She was suspended without pay on February 2. The Times reported that she resigned the following month, citing the police.
After his death, residents of the St. Tropez built a memorial at the lobby desk where Boitel greeted them, and a GoFundMe was set up for his family.
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