Maximum sentence in DUI death case

Louis Bamala COLUMBUS — was driving to work from the birthday party for one of his six children when he was killed by a drunken driver on a ramp from Alum Creek Drive to Interstate 70.

He was 49 years old and had moved to Columbus five years ago from the Demo- cratic Republic of the Congo. His wife of 20 years was pregnant with their seventh child.

The widow stood Thursday in a Franklin County courtroom and gave an impas- sioned speech, with the help of a French-language interpreter, about her grief before the sentencing of the man responsible, 33-year- old Antoine T. Briggs.

“I am standing, but I am dead,” Bibiche Bamala said. “You killed a good man ... He left Africa to come here for a better life. He was fighting for his children. He was working jobs. He was going to school ... He was like an angel.”

Briggs, who was not only drunk, but also driving with a suspended license and while on probation at the time of the Feb. 19, 2017, crash, asked for no mercy when it was his turn to speak.

“I deserve everything I’ve got coming,” he told Common Pleas Judge Kimberly Cocroft. “I send my heart out to this man’s family.”

The judge didn’t hold back her anger, telling Briggs: “I am irritated with and disgusted by your choices.”

She sentenced him to the maximum of 11 years for aggravated vehicular homicide, the offense to which he pleaded guilty in July.

She added a combined four years for two unrelated offenses — burglary and cocaine possession — for a total of 15 years in prison. She also imposed a mandatory lifetime driver’s license suspension for the fatal crash.

Cocroft said she was troubled by Briggs’ comment to a presentencing investigator that he wanted the judge “to see the pattern: All of my criminal activity is because of drugs and alcohol.”

“I have no responsibility to see the pattern,” she told him. “If you understand that you have that challenge, it is your responsibility to manage it ... If it’s not important to you, why should it be important to me?”