Michael DeAngelo, of Lindenhurst, sentenced to 7 to 21 years in crash that killed 4 family members out for ice cream

A Lindenhurst man’s offer to trade places with the four members of a Long Island family that he killed in a drug-fueled crash last August did nothing on Friday to temper the anguish and grief of the victims' relatives.

“If there was any way to go back and give my life, I would,” Michael DeAngelo, 33, said just before being sentenced in Nassau County Court to 7 to 21 years behind bars for the horrific East Massapequa wreck caused by his high-speed driving combined with the impairment from a cocktail of cocaine and fentanyl. “I didn’t ask to live, but unfortunately that cannot happen. Words do not exist to express my remorse.”

On Aug. 6, he slammed into the back of a car driven by Patrice Huntley, 60, who was out celebrating a new job on his way to get ice cream with his children Jeremiah, 10, and Hannah, 13, and his 6-year-old step-granddaughter, Chantel Solomon, who lived in Uniondale.

Huntley, his son and his daughter were killed in the crash. Chantel was taken to a hospital but died six days later. Brienna Peoples, Huntley's 18-year-old daughter, and his 14-year-old nephew, David, who were also in the car, were hospitalized and survived.

DeAngelo, sporting a crew cut and dressed in a gray polo shirt and black pants, faced the judge as he spoke to the Huntley family, but they were not convinced.

“DeAngelo, you are a coward,” one relative shouted in the courtroom in response to his apology. “You don’t have the nerve to look my sister in the face.”

Huntley, a former Marine who worked assisting other veterans, had stopped at a red light on Sunrise Highway when DeAngelo rear-ended their SUV, police said. Video surveillance footage caught the Lindenhurst driver speeding down the road, clocking speeds of 120 mph.

DeAngelo, who has struggled with addiction, has had plenty of second chances in his 33 years, prosecutor Katie Zizza said, with little effect.

Twice before, in 2012 and 2014, he has been arrested and convicted of drunken or drugged driving.

His family keeps a dose of Narcan in the house to revive him when he overdoses.

He had been arrested days before the crash on Aug. 1 on a possession of crack charge in Suffolk County. Despite the run-in with the law, two days later officers revived him from an overdose using Narcan. When they tried to take him to the hospital he bolted.

Needles and a pipe were found in DeAngelo's car after the crash, and the treating physician identified track marks on his arms and hands, according to court records.

Prosecutors and his defense lawyer, Karl Seman, did not say where he was driving on Aug. 6, the day of the crash, but surveillance footage along the highway shows him pass Huntley and his family, then stop into a gas station, before taking off again.

DeAngelo told the Department of Probation that the fentanyl-laced cocaine he had taken had caused him to black out temporarily, according to Zizza, but the prosecutor said she didn’t believe him.

“He hit the brakes right before impact,” she said, throwing cold water on the idea that he had suffered a medical episode. “He was just too high to react fast enough.”

DeAngelo pleaded guilty last month to aggravated vehicular homicide, four counts of second-degree manslaughter, aggravated vehicular assault, second- and third-degree assault and driving while impaired on drugs — nine counts in all.

Zizza asked Supreme Court Justice Robert Schwartz to punish DeAngelo to the maximum allowable sentence of 8⅓ to 25 years.

Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said that under state law the punishment is capped at 25 years “whether a defendant kills two, four or more people in a vehicular homicide.” She urged state legislators to change the law.

Schwartz told the courtroom that he reduced the punishment because DeAngelo had pleaded guilty and spared the family the pain of a trial.

Still, grieving family members and friends told the court of the devastation that they have suffered with three generations of mothers from the Huntley family having to bury their children.

Divina Hamilton, Chantel’s mother, said that it was a “car with so much potential — a hardworking dad and a carful of children.”

“They didn’t have a chance to chase their dreams,” she said. “The traumatizing experience will forever be a part of my life knowing that it caused so much loss and it still has so much effect over my life every day.”

She said that she struggles to answer when people ask her if she has children.

At a news conference after the sentencing, Donnelly’s voice quaked with anger as she described the senselessness of another fatal car crash caused by impairment.

“Countless lives destroyed and changed forever,” she said. “All because of drunk, drugged and reckless driving. I am tired. I am heartbroken. More than anything else. I'm outraged that I'm up here saying this to you again.”