Sentence for NYPD sergeant who killed doorman in drunken wrong-way crash blasted by family

A former NYPD sergeant who killed beloved Manhattan doorman Manuel Boitel in a wrong-way, drunk driving crash on the Taconic parkway in Westchester earlier this year was sentenced Wednesday to four to 12 years in prison, a punishment blasted by the family as being far too light.

With the anguished family of the victim looking on in a White Plains courtroom, former Sgt. Tiffany Howell, 47, learned her fate months after pleading guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide and second-degree manslaughter in the Jan. 22  head-on crash that killed Boitel, 61, of Peekskill, N.Y.

“I believe four years is nothing for a woman that caused so much pain because of her irresponsibility,” Boitel’s widow, Marisol Boitel, told the court in a victim impact statement. “She destroyed my family when she killed my husband because she was drinking like a lunatic without thinking about the consequences.”

“She will get out of jail in a couple of years, and she will go back to her family. Everything for her will be like a bad dream. On the other hand, for me and my family, this will always be a nightmare from which I will never be able to wake up because my husband Manuel will never come back home. He had the misfortune of crossing paths with that woman that evening.”

Howell also pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and received the same sentence. Both sentences will run concurrently, Westchester Criminal Court Judge Anne Bianchi said.

Prosecutors said Howell’s blood alcohol level was nearly three times the legal limit when her Infiniti, which was traveling the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway, plowed into Boitel’s Toyota RAV 4 shortly before midnight.

Medics rushed Boitel to Westchester Medical Center, where he died.

“We are here today because a life that mattered deeply was taken from us, not because of an unavoidable accident, but because of a series of choices that ended in an unimaginable tragedy,” said Assistant Attorney General Alison Stuart, whose office prosecuted the case, and investigates deaths in which police officers may be at fault.

“The fact that the person responsible was a police officer makes this loss even harder to accept,” Stuart said. “Police officers are entrusted with a responsibility to protect the public and uphold the law. Being off-duty does not diminish the responsibility every person has to protect the lives of others.”

Howell, an 18-year veteran, was recorded before the crash at an NYPD fraternal event in Scarsdale showing her having several drinks at an open bar. She later left alone.

Howell initially drove north on the parkway’s northbound lanes before reversing course and heading in the wrong direction, causing the crash, according to reports.

The judge also chided Howell for Boitel’s death, and said Howell’s pre-sentencing statement lamenting her ruined career was “superficial, self-absorbed and wholly inadequate.”

“This is the Boitel family’s nightmare,” Bianchi, the judge, said. “This is not your nightmare. This is a situation you created, and that you could have completely avoided. And you don’t have the right to claim this as your nightmare because it’s not.”

“You are a 48-year-old adult. You are, as are we all, responsible for the decisions and choices that you make,” the judge told Howell, saying she didn’t have to consume alcohol for several hours and then get into a car and drive.

“It goes without saying you had so many other options, so many other choices,” she said. “You could have not drank that night. You could have taken an Uber. You could have had a friend drive you home. You could have stayed at a hotel. So many choices, rather than the catastrophic choices (you made).”

Boitel, meanwhile, was returning to his home in Peekskill from his job as a doorman at Manhattan’s St. Tropez luxury condominium building on E. 64th St. near First Ave.

Boitel’s wife noticed that her husband’s GPS tracker seemed stuck in the same spot on the Taconic State Parkway for more than an hour. Their sons drove to the location, saw the wreckage and recognized their father’s car.

“I still remember my mom panicking because no matter how many times she called, he wouldn’t pick up,” Eric Boitel, 33, one of the victim’s sons, told the court in a statement. “My heart was pounding as we drove past the accident.”

He said they learned of his father’s death at the hospital.

“I was in too much shock to even cry on the drive back home,” Eric said in court. “Then I had to tell my mother that the love of her life, her husband, the father of her kids, had passed away.”

The still-grieving son said he was unhappy with the sentence.

“She took my father’s life, and only getting four to 12 years in prison, all because she’s a police officer?” he said. “She got a slap on the wrist for what she did.”

Howell apologized in court for Boitel’s death.

“I do take full responsibility for my actions. I know that I made a terrible decision, and I know that the consequences are irreversible,” Howell said. “I know that being a good mother, a loving wife, a dedicated police sergeant or someone who has never been in trouble before does not excuse what I have done.”

Howell, a married mother of two, resigned from the NYPD in March, two years before she would have received her full pension.

Outside court afterward, Boitel’s loved ones spoke of the unimaginable loss Howell’s recklessness has caused them — and how it has forever ripped the fabric of their family apart.

“He always told me, ‘When are you gonna make me a grandfather? When are you gonna have kids?’” Eric Boitel said sadly. “And I told him, ‘Whenever the time comes.’ … She took that away from us, and now they would never meet him.”

Speaking in Spanish through a translator while choking up, Marisol Boitel said, “Life continues, but nothing is the same anymore. I don’t feel any enthusiasm for anything, and I don’t care about anything anymore.

“My husband and I had so many plans for the future,” she reflected. “We were considering buying an apartment for our old age for when we retired…”

“I met him when I was 18 years old, and we got married one year later. We spent 42 years together. That is why I cannot fathom my life without him, because I knew life next to him.”

Marvin Boitel, 37, said his dad is also fondly remembered by everyone at the building where he was a doorman for more than three decades.

“All the statements that we got from where he worked. All the tenants,” he said. “All the love that they poured into the letters that they sent. You know, even his coworkers. He was there for 32 years, and he was with them eight hours out of the day, at a minimum. He was part of their family. So a lot of them say they miss him.”