Convicted drunken driver gets maximum sentence

Bill Gang

Thursday, Jan. 8, 1998 | 10:38 a.m.

There was no Christmas celebration last month for a family that lost its patriarch and his college basketball star stepson a year ago to a drunken driving 20-year-old.

Seven family members, some crying and all angry, told a district judge Wednesday of the loss that will forever stain their holidays. They chastised Michael Allen Thompson for his irresponsible and deadly actions after attending a wedding where he swilled what prosecutors said was more than 20 drinks.

At the end of the sentencing hearing, District Judge Michael Douglas gave Thompson what the family had sought -- the maximum sentence of eight to 20 years in prison.

James Addison, 58, was driving 21-year-old Roderick McClure to McCarran International Airport about 4 a.m. on Dec. 26, 1996, for a return flight to Eastern Washington University and McClure's final semester before graduating with a degree in social work.

McClure had become the college basketball team's point guard after graduating from Las Vegas' Cimarron-Memorial High School, which he led to a state basketball championship.

Thompson's sportscar was traveling 84 mph on Tropicana Avenue when it sliced through the victims' Cadillac at the Paradise Road intersection, killing the seatbelted McClure and sending Addison through the rear window and into a nearby parking lot. He died on the way to a hospital.

Thompson survived the crash he caused and spent this holiday season -- although on house arrest -- with his parents. But theirs also was a holiday tainted by the memory of the incident and the knowledge that it would be their last Christmas together.

They knew Thompson was going to prison and, because of a terminal illness, that his father wouldn't be alive when Thompson finally is paroled, according to defense attorney Bill Terry.

It apparently was too much for the now 21-year-old defendant who unsuccessfully tried to kill himself a week ago by sitting inside a running car in a garage with the door closed.

He was sent back to the Clark County Detention Center to await sentencing on the single count of felony drunken driving.

Deputy District Attorney Gary Booker suggested the suicide attempt made by the defendant was out of his fear of prison and not out of remorse.

But Thompson told the judge, "Every day that goes by, I wish it was me instead of them."

"I can apologize and apologize but that isn't going to help."

Terry noted that Thompson broke his leg in the fatal crash and "every time he takes a step there is pain and every time he takes a step he remembers the night."

At the end of the 2 1/2 hour hearing, a grim-faced judge lamented, "We're all losers this day because of what happened."

He said that Addison, who headed an extended family that filled the courtroom and overflowed into the hallway, and McClure, who was excelling academically and athletically, represented "the best things about Las Vegas."

But he said that changed to "the worst of Las Vegas" when the abuse of alcohol triggered a deadly incident.

"Nothing can change that moment in time," Douglas said.

He said that letters from the victims' family asked for justice, but he commented, "Based on the nature of events, I don't think there is justice. I can only pronounce sentence in accordance with the laws of the state."