Teen Who Drove Drunk Gets 30 Days for Fatality

The victim's husband, Henry Becker, asked Brooks to order the girl to pay half of the funeral expenses, which totaled $10,000, from her earnings.

Sobbing, the teenager apologized to Becker's family. "I can't explain how devastated I have been. . . . I can't forgive myself for taking another human life," she said, reading from a statement.

Outside the courtroom, her attorney, Peter D. Greenspun, called the sentence "fair and responsible and appropriate."

Asked where his client obtained the alcohol, Greenspun said: "It came from different sources. Kids get alcohol. There's nothing unique about that. They get it from adults. They get it by stealing. They get it with fake IDs. They get it by 'shoulder tapping,' where they tap an adult going into a 7-Eleven on the shoulder and ask if they can buy them some alcohol."

On the night of the crash, he said, "there was a lot of energy" at Westfield High because its football team was playing rival Chantilly."

"There was a group of kids there who were partying and drinking before the game," he said. "And apparently there were adults who were tailgating at the school and drinking."

Kathleen Becker was a school crossing guard in the 1970s and 1980s at Sterling Elementary School. In recent years, she did volunteer work but spent most of her time caring for a teenage son who has a genetic disorder.

Prosecutors had wanted to try the teenager as an adult. But they were turned down by a Circuit Court judge who ruled that the girl was emotionally and socially immature, had no previous criminal record and had demonstrated "excellence" in school.

Yesterday, Brooks made a prediction before sending the teenager back to the detention center in Leesburg.

"I think this is something that's going to eat at you for a long time," she said.