Trying to Atone : Prison-Bound for Causing Fatal Crash, Man Warns Youths About Drugs

Scott William Johnson sat in a wheelchair in front of the altar of St. Edwards Church on 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.”

To some, Johnson’s address to students at St. Edwards Parish School may have seemed like another in the dozens of talks that he has delivered to schools, churches and civic groups during the last year.

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

Authorities say that Johnson was under the influence of a near-toxic level of cocaine when his vehicle slammed head-on into a Bronco driven by Patrice Marie Liebelt, 34, of Yorba Linda, who was seven months pregnant. The Bronco bounced into the air and landed on a third car driven by 45-year-old Carmen Hernandez Martinez.

The fetus that Liebelt was carrying died instantly. Liebelt and Martinez died a few days after the crash.

Johnson, who lost his right leg and suffered numerous 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 was healthy enough to begin his sentence and ordered him to report to state prison. Johnson will be eligible for parole in 6 1/2 years, according to prosecutors.

“I’m nervous and anxious at the same time,” Johnson said in an interview 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 the students in grades five through eight, Johnson said his mistakes began at age 12 when he started to drink. It would be years before he started using drugs.

Johnson, whose father is an engineer and whose mother is a 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 stole from his employers to support his addiction and recorded two drunk-driving convictions before he was 21.

Johnson said that after graduating in theater arts from San Francisco State University in 1985, he returned to Southern California and 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 began using cocaine 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.

It all came to a screeching halt that fateful day in 1987 when he loaded up on cocaine at a friend’s house and attempted to drive home.

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

“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.”

Liebelt’s husband, Christopher, also suffered injuries in the crash. He 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.”