Teen Who Drove Drunk Gets 30 Days for Fatality

A 17-year-old Fairfax County girl who pleaded guilty in a drunken-driving crash that killed a Leesburg woman was sentenced yesterday to 30 days in a juvenile detention center and ordered to do 500 hours of community service.

Loudoun County juvenile court Judge Pamela L. Brooks suspended the most punitive part of the sentence, which called for the teenager to be detained until September 2011, when she turns 21. Brooks also revoked the girl's driver's license and ordered her to get a job to pay $5,000 in funeral expenses to the victim's family.

The teenager was sent to Loudoun's detention center April 21 after she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Brooks did not give her any credit for the 38 days she has served.

Kathleen Becker, 59, died instantly the night of Sept. 20 when her van was hit head-on by the teenager's sport-utility vehicle. Becker was returning home from choir practice at a Catholic church in Sterling.

The teenager had been "binge drinking" before and during a football game at Westfield High School, where she was a senior, authorities said. She had left the game in Chantilly drunk and ended up on Route 15 in Loudoun. She had a blood-alcohol level of 0.17, more than twice the 0.08 legal limit for adults under Virginia law, after the crash.

"My options, quite frankly, are not options I am happy with. . . . Frankly, I don't think 30 days is long enough. I don't think 60 days is long enough," Brooks told the teenager, who was shackled around her ankles and dressed in a green detention-center outfit.

Brooks said a state pre-sentencing report concluded that the girl was "not an appropriate candidate" to be sent to a Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice detention facility.

"You are a convicted felon, so you are a criminal," Brooks told the girl, a first-time offender. "But I would not classify you as a hardened criminal."

The Washington Post generally does not name juveniles charged with crimes unless they are charged as adults.

Becker's daughter, Sharon Macielinski, said her family did not want the girl to be locked up for a long period. The teenager will be on supervised probation until she is 21.

In an interview Wednesday, Macielinski said: "We're not looking out for revenge or payback or anything like that. We're looking at: What is best for rehabilitating this individual so other people don't get hurt?"

Yesterday, Loudoun Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Adriana Eberle urged Brooks to hand down a sentence that would deter other teens from drinking. "This is bigger than what is going on inside this courtroom. . . . She should not get the same punishment as a juvenile who commits a grand larceny," she said.