Man gets 6 years in drunken driving deaths

Alecia Foster

SAN FERNANDO -- A La Crescenta man has been sentenced to six years in

state prison for a 1999 drunken driving crash that took the lives of his

two best friends.

San Fernando Superior Court Judge Meredith Taylor imposed the sentence

and ordered Mark Herwig, 25, to pay $5,000 in restitution to the court

for the October 1999 crash that killed Christopher and Allison Jagoe,

also of La Crescenta.

The sentence, handed down Thursday morning, came two months after

Herwig pleaded guilty to charges that included gross vehicular

manslaughter while intoxicated causing injury or death.

While Taylor took into consideration Herwig’s injuries, feelings of

remorse and psychological evaluation, she pointed out he had been

reprimanded for speeding on several occasions before October 1999 and had

been attempting to race another vehicle at the time of the crash.

“It seems to the court [that] clearly this was not an accident,”

Taylor said.

Herwig stared straight ahead and several of his family members wiped

away tears as Taylor delivered the sentence. Only minutes before, Herwig

appeared to hold back emotions as Tim and Louisa Jagoe recalled the

promising young lives of their two children.

Christopher cared for the disabled and was preparing to take nursing

courses, while Allison was planning to become an accountant, Louisa Jagoe

said.

“I honestly don’t believe a mother has existed who has loved her

children as much as I did,” she said.

Tim Jagoe said he had been torn over what an appropriate sentence

would be for Herwig. Although the young man had been close to the family,

Tim said, his children “died horrible deaths.”

“My wife and I were given life sentences,” he said. “There will be no

day for me when I won’t miss my children.”

Reading from a prepared statement shortly after his sentencing, Herwig

said he too had been consumed by grief.

“We were together all the time,” he said of Christopher, Allison and

himself. “I never thought the three of us would ever be separated.

“Every day in the mirror, I see the person that brought that to an

end.”

Herwig, who had been free since the accident, was taken into custody

immediately after the hearing.

He will be eligible for parole in three years.