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Ganz sentenced in crash that killed 4 teens

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Alana Burgess (Photo by Howard Schnapp)
Jan 30, 2006


BY ANN GIVENS
STAFF WRITER

January 31, 2006


About a year after Gerrard Ganz killed her daughter in a brutal car accident, Alana Burgess asked the 33-year-old Syosset man to do something for her.

"What I want is for the defendant to close his eyes and imagine someone calling him and telling him that his child has died," said Burgess, the mother of Anastasia Mendez Burgess, 15, who was killed in the crash on Old Country Road in Westbury in December 2004.

Ganz, sentenced yesterday for convictions of criminally negligent homicide and driving while impaired, told Burgess and the parents of the other three teenagers killed, that he understood.

If someone hurt his son, he said in the Mineola courtroom, "I would be destroyed. I would have the same animosity toward that person as you do toward myself."

Nassau County Judge Jerald Carter sentenced Ganz yesterday to 1 1/3 to 4 years in prison after he was convicted last December at trial of criminally negligent homicide and driving while impaired. Ganz was acquitted of the top charge against him, second-degree manslaughter, as well as vehicular manslaughter and driving while intoxicated.

The accident occurred when Ganz's car slammed into a Honda driven by Tiffany Hagigal, of Westbury, sending it into a telephone pole where it burst into flames.

Burgess, Anelie Thelemaque, 16, and Guy Victor, 19, both of Westbury, and Shauna Mattison, 15, of the Bronx, were all killed in the accident.

Hagigal, who had only a learner's permit and was not allowed to drive at night, was the only one in her car to survive. She was not charged.

Carter expressed some frustration at not being able to impose a longer sentence.

"If you walked into a store and pulled out a gun and shot four people I would sentence you to consecutive time," Carter said.

But because the four teens were killed as the result of a single act, state law dictates that Ganz can't serve separate sentences for each victim, Carter said.

"I did make a mistake that night," said Ganz, looking into the faces of the parents. "I thought I was 100 percent fine, and I wasn't."

Parents said hearing Ganz take responsibility helped, but didn't end their pain.

"No time would be enough," Burgess said. "Our kids are never coming home."

JUSTITIA AMERICANA si a spus cuvintul, asa ca CIOCUL MIC !!!!