Drunk Driver Contrite as Death Brings 8-Year Term

In an emotional courtroom hearing Thursday, a mother who saw her teen-age daughter struck down by a drunk driver on the Ventura Freeway urged the man convicted in the case to “please, love yourself.”

The man, Rodney Paul Brogna, 33, of Sherman Oaks, wiped tears from his eyes and looked directly at Sandra Loomis as she told him she forgave him for the crash last year that took the life of her only child.

“Everything that my husband and I have been fighting for has not been coming from vengeance or from hate, but from love,” Loomis, who has been a leader of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, told Brogna at his sentencing hearing in Van Nuys Superior Court.

“Mr. Brogna, please love yourself.”

Brogna, a carpenter, was convicted last month of vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving in the Feb. 24, 1986, collision that killed 17-year-old Alexandra Allison Vincent of North Hollywood.

Two Previous Convictions

Judge Alan B. Haber on Thursday imposed the maximum sentence of eight years, noting Brogna’s two previous misdemeanor convictions for drunk driving.

“In the process of terminating this girl’s life, you not only victimized her family, but you victimized your family as well,” the judge said. “The bottom line is enough is enough.”

Defense attorney Brian S. Braff pleaded for a sentence of six years, saying the longer term “ignores the essential decency” of Brogna.

“He is a man who has no violence in his heart,” Braff said.

The attorney portrayed his client as a “caring, sensitive, gentle human being” who never learned to cope with the 1980 cancer death of his father and who is himself the father of an 11-year-old boy.

The accident occurred after Vincent had car trouble and pulled to the shoulder of the Ventura Freeway, just east of the San Diego Freeway. She telephoned her mother, who summoned a tow truck and arrived to assist.

While Loomis walked to the tow truck, Vincent went toward her mother’s car, which also was parked on the shoulder, to retrieve an automobile club card. Brogna’s vehicle hit the mother’s car, which struck Vincent, knocking her over the guardrail, prosecutors said.

A blood sample taken from Brogna more than two hours after the accident had an alcohol content of 0.17%, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ed Consiglio said. Under state law, a motorist is presumed drunk at 0.10% or higher.

“The night of the crime I forgave you,” Loomis told Brogna Thursday. “I still forgive you.”

In June, Loomis, an actress, was named co-president of the Los Angeles County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, along with her husband, Rod. Vincent’s father, E. Duke Vincent, is a television producer

Brogna spoke briefly at Thursday’s hearing, expressing his sorrow to the victim’s family.

“If accepting the murder charge could bring Alexandra Vincent back, I would have done that,” he said.

He will be eligible for parole in about four years.