The Brooklyn mom who fatally hit a motorcyclist last year has been sentenced to just 60 days in jail. Naisha Sutton, 26, hit 27-year-old hedge fund executive Ronan Katz after making an illegal left turn off of Canal Street in September 2010. Although she made the illegal turn, had no driver's license, and admitted to fleeing the scene, she was spared a harsher sentence: “They realized that she actually got out of the car and asked that people call 911” before panicking and speeding away," defense lawyer Howard Simmons said.
Katz had been riding his Ducati motorcycle north on West Street when Sutton made her illegal turn. Sutton only had a learner’s permit and should not have been driving without a licensed driver in the car; her 22-month-old child was also in the car at the time. Simmons said she had gotten out of her car at the scene, spoke to onlookers who said they would call an ambulance, and then left in a panicked state. Her car broke down on the Brooklyn Bridge, and she was towed across the East River. When she got home, she went to the nearby 75th Precinct stationhouse with her father and turned herself in.
Simmons argued that Sutton, a single mother who had worked as a drugstore cashier and a federal government worker, "panicked" in the moment when she left the scene. Sutton was ultimately allowed to plead guilty to leaving the scene of an accident—a misdemeanor—instead of more serious negligent-homicide or reckless-manslaughter charges.
