Man Sentenced to Prison in Fatal DUI Crash
A 49-year-old Quartz Hill man was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years to life in prison for killing an elementary school teacher when he drunkenly plowed through a stop sign in Lancaster in October.
Van Nuys Superior Court Commissioner Michael Duffey imposed the sentence on Joel Charles Kyne for the murder, his seventh drunk-driving conviction.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Estes said his office sought murder charges against Kyne because of his record of drunk driving.
Kyne’s blood-alcohol level was 0.35, more than four times the legal limit, when he drove a pickup truck into a compact car, killing 27-year-old Erica Nemback, a fourth-grade teacher at Cottonwood Elementary School and the daughter of a California Highway Patrol sergeant.
Between 1980 and 1987, Kyne was convicted six times of drunk driving, Estes said.
He said Kyne was sentenced to jail in four of the six cases according his driving record with the Department of Motor Vehicles. But it is unclear whether he actually served any jail time or whether the sentences were suspended, because the court files have been destroyed.
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