Parents’ anguish
The heartbroken dad of an 11-year-old Long Island girl mowed down by a doped-up hit-run driver made a chilling plea to the motorist in court yesterday after she mumbled her apology — to “shout loudly” so his dead daughter could “hear you from her grave.”
Maureen Lambert, 22, of Stony Brook — who was slapped with 4 to 12 years behind bars for the death of Courtney Sipes — couldn’t even look at her victim’s tearful dad, Tracey Sipes, as prosecutors read his gut-wrenching victim-impact statement in front of a stunned Riverhead courtroom.
“You may be sorry you got caught,” Sipes, of Smithtown, said. “But you had better shout loudly for Courtney to hear you from her grave.”
Earlier, he told the rapt chamber in his statement that he “will never walk [Courtney] down the aisle at her wedding. I will never hold her babies. I will forever be shattered.”
His sobbing wife, Lavena, slammed Lambert as “a monster” for shooting up heroin and mowing down her daughter in front of her eyes two days before Thanksgiving 2009.
Lambert fled the scene, hid her car, and surrendered to cops 26 hours later — when the drugs were no longer in her system.
“Because you were high on drugs, you senselessly ran her down and left her to die in the street,” Lavena Sipes told her daughter’s killer, who refused to meet her gaze. “Our lives can never again be truly happy because nothing can bring Courtney back to us.”
“Life as we know it is no more. There are holes in our hearts forever that cannot be filled. You destroyed our family.
“Courtney’s dreams couldn’t come true, but we certainly hope our dream of a long incarceration for you will come true,” she said.
In a last-ditch attempt to be spared, Lambert, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, leaving the scene and other charges in October, groveled that “I never wanted for this horrible tragedy to happen,” while reading from a prepared apology.
“I hope one day you will find it in your hearts to forgive me for the nightmare that I cannot change,” she said.
She even tried to weasel out of the charge that she was high during the Smithtown crash, nearly nullifying her plea deal, but Judge Stephen Braslow blasted her.
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Braslow told Lambert, as he sentenced her to the max with a recommendation of no parole. “You’re getting a good deal here.”
“You brought yourself to that day, with your actions and substance abuse,” Braslow said.
