A Long Island businessman who admitted to being drunk and high on drugs in a wrong-way crash that killed two teens nearly two years ago has been sentenced to up to 25 years in prison.
Amandeep Singh, of Roslyn, pleaded guilty last month to aggravated vehicular manslaughter and related charges in the deaths of eighth graders Ethan Falkowitz and Drew Hassenbein on May 2, 2023.
On Friday, Judge Helene Gugerty sentenced him to 8 ⅓ to 25 years in prison.
During the hearing, family members delivered emotional impact statements, urging the judge to give Singh the maximum sentence.
“Instead of picking up my son at school, I had to pick him up at the morgue. Instead of watching him use his tennis racket like a magic wand, I had to bury it with him,” Hassenbein’s father said, according to the Long Island Press.
“You stole my heart and soul,” said Falkowitz’s mother.
Singh, a father of two, said he “would never hurt a child intentionally and yet [he] did,” ABC NY reported.
“I apologize from the bottom of my heart for your loss,” he said when addressing the victims’ families.
The two teens, described by local media as tennis “prodigies,” and “stars,” were driving home from celebrating a high school tennis match win on the night of May 3, 2023, when Singh crashed his pickup truck into their car on North Broadway in Jericho.
Prosecutors say the 36-year-old construction executive was driving his 2021 Dodge Ram TRX at approximately 95 miles per hour while intoxicated and high on cocaine when he crossed over the road and continued south in the northbound lane.
He then crashed his 2021 Dodge Ram TRX into an Alfa Romeo with four kids inside.
Falkowitz and Hassenbein were killed instantly. The two other teens were rushed to an area hospital with multiple injuries.
Singh fled the scene but was arrested a short time later. He was found hiding near a dumpster in the parking lot of a nearby shopping center, according to the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office.
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