Sixteen years after her son and three others were killed in a West Side drunken-driving crash, Brenda Posley walked slowly to the front of a Cook County courtroom Friday.
She set her purse down on the witness stand and turned to look at David Alcantar, who was driving drunk, speeding at 100 mph when he crashed into a parked semi in 2000, killing all four of his passengers.
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“David, why am I here today?” said Posley, 56, spreading her arms wide as tears began to stream from her eyes. “Don’t you think that I have suffered enough?”
Alcantar, now 35, on Friday asked a judge to reduce his 18-year sentence for reckless homicide — which he has already served and for which he’s on parole — to 15 years.
A state appeals court last year ordered that he be resentenced, finding that a trial judge had relied on incorrect information at his first sentencing. His appeal was filed 10 years ago from prison, but dragged on for years before he won a hearing. The most Alcantar could hope for Friday was to be taken off parole, his attorney said.
Friday was the first time since her son’s death that Posley had the chance to directly confront Alcantar. Sunday will be the 16th anniversary of his death.
“I wanted him to see the pain that my family has experienced so we never have to go through this again,” Posley said after the hearing.
Rather than read from a prepared statement, as most crime victims and their families do, Posley spoke off-the-cuff, looking at Alcantar. She called him a “young man” and lectured him so powerfully that the entire courtroom grew quiet.
“You were the one driving 100 miles per hour and you were the only one who survived,” she said.
“I know you were 19 at the time but now you’re 30 something years old — why am I here?”
“Can you help me understand that? Don’t you think I suffered enough for 16 years?”
“Can he reply to me your honor?” she said, turning to Judge Michael McHale.
“Not in this fashion, ma’am,” McHale replied.
Alcantar was driving west on the 4200 block of West Chicago Avenue in the West Garfield Park neighborhood Sept. 18, 2000, when he crashed into the parked tractor-trailer.
The roof of his car was peeled off and three people, including his brother and best friend, were ejected. Posley’s son Maurice, 22, his friend Jontue Clark, 19, as well as Alcantar’s brother Samuel, 24, and cousin Damian Vallez, 17, were killed.
Prosecutors said Friday that Alcantar’s blood-alcohol level was between .108 and .116, well over the legal limit of .08. A jury had convicted him of multiple counts of reckless homicide.
“I’m very sorry,” Alcantar said Friday in a brief statement he read to the judge, saying he lived every day now as a sober man.
His attorney, Todd Chatman, said his client was a model prisoner who had completed alcohol treatment in prison and would be forever haunted by the deaths of his brother and close friend.
In the end, Judge McHale imposed the same, 18-year prison sentence that Alcantar received at his first trial.
Posley said after the hearing that it was difficult to make the trip to the Leighton Criminal Court Building just two days before the 16th anniversary of her son’s death to ensure Alcantar’s sentence wasn’t reduced.
“Today it was like — what was the purpose of this? Eighteen years is nothing compared (to four deaths),” she said. “I get it, you’ve been a model prisoner, but you’re alive to do that. You’re alive.”
Posley said she wouldn’t come back to court again. The memories the experience dredged up are too painful, she said.
“It’s the end for me,” she said. “I won’t come back here. Even if he comes back (on appeal) I won’t do it.”
But she said a moment of closure came outside the courthouse when she asked Alcantar why she had to be in court again.
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“I said ‘I know you were 19 and you never woke up intending to take four lives. I get it. But you’re 34 years old now. Why are we here?’ ” she said.
After hearing his explanation, Posley said she looked him in the eye. “David, is it over?”
“He said, ‘Yes, it is.’ “