Man Sentenced in Traffic-Dispute Killing : Courts: Gunman gets 19 years to life in prison for 1993 slaying on a Huntington Beach roadside. Judge laments the impact on families of victim, assailant.

As two families wept nearby, a Westminster man was sentenced Friday to 19 years to life in prison for gunning down a stranger who had cut him off in traffic.

The judge called the case “typical” in terms of the pain the crime has caused loved ones of both men.

“I just wish that every time I picked up the paper and read of people killed in drive-by shootings or in a knifing, that they’d have to come in here first and listen to the destruction wrought on both sides in a crime like this,” said Orange County Superior Court Judge William W. Bedsworth.

“There is nothing unusual about this. All of the family members on both sides have been devastated by this crime.”

The judge ordered Gifford Michael Madden to serve a 15-years-to-life term for second-degree murder, with an additional four years for using a gun in the killing.

Madden, 30, was convicted in February of shooting Daniel Martin Renz, 34, also of Westminster, after both men tried to negotiate a right turn from Beach Boulevard onto Edinger Avenue in Huntington Beach. Madden had been tailgating, and the men then pulled over to the side of the road to argue.

As Renz walked to Madden’s car to confront him, Madden, still seated in his car, shot him. Madden then fled the scene and got rid of the gun, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood.

Renz’s fiancee, Teresa Lea of Huntington Beach, told the judge that she and Renz were raising three young daughters when the killing occurred in December, 1993. Lea said the family had been looking forward to Christmas and the couple’s wedding.

“I just wonder if Mr. Madden realizes how hard it was to tell a 2-year-old, a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old that Daddy is gone away and is not coming back,” said Lea, 29. “Things were great. We were planning a wonderful Christmas. Now things are hard, really hard. . . . (Madden) shouldn’t have taken the law into his own hands.”

Lea walked back to her seat, doubled over and wept, leaning her head against a railing.

Genevieve Martin, a longtime friend of Madden’s family, also wept as she stepped to the podium and asked the judge for leniency.

“Gifford has never done anything of this nature before,” Martin said. “To send him away like this . . . I do not feel it is proper or fair. . . . I am begging the court.”

During the trial, Madden’s attorney, deputy public defender Tim Severin, argued that Madden was suffering from acute stress because of a recent residential robbery in which Madden was shot in the chest. After that ordeal, he began carrying a weapon for protection, according to court testimony.

Madden testified that he shot Renz because he believed Renz was reaching for something, possibly a weapon.

Prosecutor Kirkwood argued that Madden’s actions leading up to Renz’s death were not of a man trying to avoid trouble or protect himself, but of someone wanting to pick a fight.

On Friday, Kirkwood said she was pleased with the sentence.

“The public needs to be made aware that if they engage in this type of violence they face a substantial amount of prison time,” she said.