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Loading ...Woman imprisoned for driving car into bar crowd
04.23.2009 7:00am EDT
(Rochester, New York) A woman drew a maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison Wednesday for ramming her car into a crowd during a fight in the parking lot of a tavern popular with area gays, killing a man and injuring four women.
Sandra Arena, a 48-year-old hairdresser, was acquitted of second-degree murder but convicted of manslaughter during a nonjury trial in March.“I don’t think there was evil intent here. It was a reckless act,” Judge Frank Geraci said.
Arena tearfully apologized to the family of Chad Coleman, 22, who died after being pinned under her car in a parking lot outside Nasty D’s Bar and Grill shortly before 2 a.m. on Aug. 13. Witnesses said Arena spun her wheels trying in vain to back up while Coleman was caught under the car.
“I can’t imagine how afraid my son was at that time,” Coleman’s mother, Latricia Swift-Winbush, said in appealing to the judge to “use her as an example that this type of behavior will not be tolerated in this city.”
Arena said she was trying to break up a melee after she was punched by a man who then turned on her girlfriend. She said she expected the crowd to scatter and didn’t intend to harm anyone. Prosecutors maintained she displayed depraved indifference to human life.
A 19-year-old woman testified that she confronted Arena in the bar over her relationship with the teen’s former girlfriend. That led to a fight next to Arena’s car during which a man punched her in the face and then attacked one of her friends, Toni Dalesandro, 21.
Arena said she drove at speed toward a group of about 10 people to try to help Dalesandro, who was among the four women injured.
to clear up the speculations here sandra arena is not gay. she is a married 48 year old woman, with a teenage son (the same age of the girl she had recently been hanging around with). two people she ran down and the person she killed were my friends, the other two she ran down were her own friends.
words of advise: know the back story before you start spouting your mouths off.
this had nothing to do with her going after gays or the judicial going after her for her being gay.
i sat through court day after day and i sat through the sentencing and that sorry excuse for a woman is lucky that she got off so easily. chad was murdered by this woman, on his own mother’s birthday, only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was trying to help her friends up off of the ground after separating the fight in the parking lot.
also, regardless of your views toward homosexuality this has nothing to do with what happened here.
Why are you even ON this site, “Denise”? You and your kind are most definitely NOT welcome here. Now, go away. Thank you, biotch.
I agree with Bruce. This act has nothing to do with being gay, straight, or otherwise. It was a stupid and violent act against another, or other human beings, and certainly does not define the action of gays or straights.
Denise. Where do you get off that ‘ALL GAYS”
‘feel the need to do such nasty sick things and feel proud of themselves?” I don’t see where ‘ALL GAYS’ were involved here, nor do I see anywhere that says that anyone is ‘proud of themselves’. Why are you even reading this site if you feel that way about ‘All Gays’?
I didn’t hear your voice when Mathew Shepard was killed by some ’sick’ guys, or when gays are bashed by sick, religious whackos.
To drive a car into a crowd is assault with a deadly weapon! It is the equivilalent of using a gun to get a group of people to do what you want them to do.
THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!
Gay or not she was wrong to use a car to control a crowd!
In this day of cell phones she could have called the police.
Lock Her UP! (that is not homophobia) it is justice.
This is homophobia in the legal system. If this would have been a white, blonde, church going soccer mom then the charges would have been dropped. For all we know this could have been a simple accident made worse by the driver having a panic attack and not knowing what to do. Judges need to place special consideration before sentencing a gay or lesbian person to prison because it’s pretty much a death sentence for us.
denise you are obviously a stupid [jerk], go back to reading your bloody bible with your bloody gash, how is for you for being “sick” thats why GOD gave you the CURSE!
BLEED BLEED BLEED to death, please.
why do all gay people feel they need to do such nasty sick things and be try to be proud of themselves. When will they all wake up and realise they are all sick.
bars of most any type have a potential for being the scene of brawls, fights and violence. I rarely go to them and don’t miss them.