Man gets maximum for fatal DUI crash

Louis Bamala 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 Democratic 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 impassioned speech, with the help of a Frenchlanguage 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 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 Briggs 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.

She also imposed a mandatory lifetime driver's license suspension.

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?"

According to Columbus police, Briggs lost control of his Chevrolet Camaro while exiting eastbound I- 70 on the ramp to Alum Creek Drive, drove across a grassy area and slammed into the side of Bamala's Dodge Durango on an adjacent ramp.

Briggs' blood- alcohol level was measured at 0.20 percent, more than twice the limit at which a driver is considered impaired under Ohio law.

Assistant Prosecutor Dan Cable told the judge that plenty of people struggle with drug and alcohol addictions, but few of them come to court for a string of offenses that include causing someone's death.

"I'm usually very loathe to tell you to throw someone away for as long as possible," he said. "That's what I'm doing today."