‘Learn From My Mistakes’ : Felon Bound for Prison Delivers Drug Warning

Scott William Johnson sat in a wheelchair in front of the altar of St. Edward’s Church here Wednesday and looked down at the 130 students who had come to hear him confess.

“You don’t want to be in my seat,” Johnson, 30, said, pointing to his right leg amputated above the knee. “Every morning when I wake up and look at my legs, I think how my decision to use drugs and alcohol killed two women and a child who never had the chance to breathe.”

For a few people, Johnson’s address to students at the St. Edward’s Roman Catholic Parish School would have seemed like another in the dozens of talks that he has delivered to schools, churches and civic groups in the last year.

But for Johnson, it was his last chance in years to win converts in what he calls a personal campaign against alcohol and drug abuse. On Friday the Placentia man must report to Chino State Prison to begin a 13-year sentence for killing two women--including one who was pregnant--in a three-car crash in Yorba Linda in January, 1987.

The prosecution said during his trial that Johnson was under the influence of a near-toxic level of cocaine when his vehicle slammed head on into a Ford Bronco driven by Patrice Marie Liebelt, 34, of Yorba Linda, who was seven months’ pregnant. Her vehicle was knocked into the air and landed on a third car driven by Carmen Hernandez Martinez, 45.

Liebelt’s fetus died instantly; Liebelt and Martinez died a few days later.

Johnson, who lost his right leg and suffered many other injuries, pleaded guilty in 1987 to three counts of vehicular manslaughter, but his prison sentence was delayed because he needed 29 surgeries to repair his remaining leg.

Last month, an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled that Johnson now is healthy enough to begin his sentence and ordered him to report to state prison Friday. Johnson will be eligible for parole in 6 1/2 years, prosecutors said.

“I’m nervous and anxious at the same time,” Johnson said Wednesday. “I want to get it done and over with. I know I have a debt to pay. . . . I just hope others can learn from my mistakes so they won’t have to suffer the same consequences.”

In his 40-minute talk to students in grades five to eight, Johnson said his mistakes began when he started to drink at age 12.

Johnson, whose father is a Rockwell engineer and mother is a school psychologist, said he never thought that he could become an alcoholic and a drug addict.

“I never thought it could happen to me,” he said. “I thought an alcoholic was one of those bums on the street, that I was not old enough.”

Many of the students sat around Johnson’s wheelchair and sometimes gasped as he told accounts of how he manipulated his family and friends, stole from his employers to support his addiction and recorded two drunk-driving convictions before he was 21.

After graduating in theater arts from San Francisco State University in 1985, Johnson said, he returned to Southern California, where he began to work for drug dealers.

“I was being paid to deliver cocaine to the dealers’ high-priced clientele, rich people on the beach and in Beverly Hills,” he said. “. . . I would arrange for people to get hurt if they didn’t pay up. It was a very violent world.”

Johnson said he eventually began using cocaine himself and spent up to $700 a day to support his habit.

“It was a new way to be the center of attention, for everyone to like me, so I powdered everybody’s nose,” Johnson said.

Then came the fateful day in 1987 when he loaded up on cocaine at a friend’s house and tried to drive home.

Principal Joe Sinacori said Johnson’s story is relevant for his students because “there is a large amount of peer pressure and the need to fit in when they’re at this age. They need to know that it could happen to them, and they need to be aware of the consequences of choosing drugs and alcohol.”

After his address, some students said Johnson’s experience had persuaded them not to use drugs and alcohol.

“I’ve had beer and wine a few times before,” a 13-year-old boy from San Juan Capistrano said, “but not again. I want to keep my legs.”

“I never want to do drugs,” said Gabriela Melendez, 12. “He has to live for the rest of his life with the thought that he killed two people and a baby.”

Student after student raised their hands to ask Johnson questions.

“Have you kept in touch with the relatives of the people who died?” one student asked.

Johnson said that at the last court hearing in October, he had spoken to Liebelt’s husband, Christopher Liebelt, who was also injured in the crash.

The husband told him that he was sorry that “it had to come down” to Johnson’s going to prison, Johnson said.

Johnson said he planned to write to Liebelt from prison.

“There are so many things I want to tell him,” Johnson said, adding that he plans to counsel people against alcohol and drug abuse after he completes his term.

Liebelt could not be reached for comment, but Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregg L. Prickett, who prosecuted the case, said Liebelt “wants to see the defendant serve his sentence. It is a shame that it took a tragedy like this to convince Mr. Johnson that choosing drugs and driving does not mix and will not be tolerated,” Prickett said.

“It is a shame that three people had to die to teach him that lesson, and hopefully other people can learn from his tragic mistakes.”