Couple to go to prison in death

Walking across the parking lot of a Hollywood diner, Roderick Poole was on his way to dinner with his wife on Mother’s Day when a car backed out of a parking space and bumped into a restaurant worker standing nearby.

“Watch it!” Poole called out. The vehicle’s driver apologized to the worker but exchanged angry words with Poole.

In the next few moments, the car’s driver and her husband assaulted Poole before speeding off with their young son in the back seat, leaving the English-born guitarist lying in the parking lot clutching his stomach. Poole, 45, had been fatally stabbed.

On Tuesday, Poole’s wife stood in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom and confronted the couple convicted in the killing, telling the court that her husband had not been looking for a fight that May 2007 evening but was trying to speak up for a stranger.

“He would speak for the underdog, he would speak for people who needed to be defended,” Lisa Ladaw said as friends wept quietly in the audience behind her. “He was my best friend. He was my life.”

During an emotional hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor sentenced Michael and Angela Sheridan to separate prison terms, describing their actions as “cowardly” and unprovoked.

“The conduct is egregious beyond words,” Pastor said as he sentenced Michael Sheridan to 15 years to life for second-degree murder. “The victim in this case, Mr. Poole, was particularly vulnerable at the time he was attacked brutally by Mr. Sheridan.”

Michael Sheridan, 27, was accused of stabbing Poole with a wooden-handled steak knife. But Pastor described Sheridan’s wife as the “provocateur” in the confrontation and sentenced her to three years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.

Minutes before receiving her sentence, Angela Sheridan, a 26-year-old file clerk at a downtown law firm, apologized for her actions. Sitting in dark blue jail scrubs with her hands cuffed behind her, she asked Poole’s family for forgiveness and pleaded for leniency from the judge.

“I’m so sorry this has happened,” she said, reading from a statement. “I never thought my decision to get out of the car would have such a tragic outcome.”

Her defense attorney argued that her client had snapped that night because Poole called her “bitch,” but she never intended to kill him.

Michael Sheridan, slim with short dark hair and a thin mustache, sat through the hearing in silence. His attorney told the judge that Sheridan had taken his wife, their son and his mother to Mel’s Drive-In to celebrate Mother’s Day that evening without any thought of violence.

Deputy Public Defender Alba N. Marrero said her client felt the need to act in defense of his family during the confrontation with Poole and did not deserve to be convicted of murder.

“We know no one takes the whole family somewhere on Mother’s Day with the intention to kill,” Marrero said.

Sandra Sheridan, Michael’s mother, begged the judge to show mercy. She said she had been the one who suggested the family go to the Hollywood diner when her son offered to take her out for Mother’s Day.

“You don’t know how much I regret that,” she said. “Mother’s Day for me doesn’t exist anymore because of this.”

In the audience, friends of Poole bristled at one point when an aunt of Michael Sheridan told the court that Poole’s wife should have shown better judgment and stopped her husband from intervening.

During the trial earlier this year, Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Dickman presented security camera footage that showed Poole walking away from the Sheridans three times before the couple finally attacked him.

Witnesses said they heard Angela Sheridan tell him “I could kill you” several times before the assault began. And they testified they saw her hit Poole in the head and kick him while her husband appeared to punch him in the chest. An autopsy later showed Poole was stabbed six times.

Richard Grunauer, a former business partner of Poole, told the judge that his friend -- who was 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighed 157 pounds -- would have posed no threat that evening.

“He was a skinny little English kid with a heart of gold,” Grunauer said.

Several friends described Poole as a talented guitarist and a fixture of the Los Angeles experimental music scene who devoted his life to his wife and his craft. Grunauer said his friend’s encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and blues had helped him make friends across the globe.

In the last two years before his death, Poole had stopped performing so that he could focus on composing.

“Rod was a pioneer of music,” said his friend Jessica Catron. “He was developing an extremely complex and beautiful art form. . . . Because his life was cut short, the world will never know the importance of his music.”

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jack.leonard@latimes.com