A fight that left a teenage boy dead took its toll on another young life Tuesday.
Lakiesha Vigil, who was behind the wheel of a car that inflicted crushing injuries on 16-year-old Nathan Bozonier, was sentenced to 21 years in prison after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.
“You have walked the earth, ma’am, for 21 years. You will be sentenced to 21 years,” Adams County District Court Judge Michael Goodbee told Vigil, who had sobbed and shook as she apologized in court to Bozonier’s family.
Her apology sparked fresh crying among Bozonier’s relatives in an emotional court session. The sentence, which was less than half the 48-year maximum, prompted a young woman from Bozonier’s family to leave for the hallway, where loud sobs were heard.
Vigil had driven others to an arranged fight in a Thornton neighborhood in February 2010. Her car became stuck on a driveway retaining wall after she drove into an area where her outnumbered friends were battling.
She was alone in the car when it was attacked with an aluminum baseball bat that witnesses alleged was in the hands of Bozonier. The car lurched forward in a move that the judge said may have been an attempt to flee the attack or may have been an attempt to hit Bozonier.
The boy was crushed between the front bumper and another retaining wall. He was then attacked with the bat by Adrian Quintana and Antonio Rios, and died shortly after in a hospital.
The “key moment,” Goodbee said, came after Bozonier was hit by the car. Vigil did not seek help for the boy, he said, but stayed where she was as the two men “moved in for the kill.”
All three were charged with first-degree murder. Quintana, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, was sentenced earlier this year to 24 years in prison. Rios, whom a jury found guilty of second-degree murder, will be sentenced later this month.
Goodbee said he found Vigil’s expression of remorse more genuine than her co-defendants’, but said his job was to focus on justice instead of mercy.
Bozonier’s mother, Wanda Guzman, called her son “the jewel that was supposed to be on my crown when I go to heaven.”
“I believe that if I have to do a life sentence for my son, then she should have to do the maximum sentence for what she did to me,” Guzman added.
Bozonier’s sister Antoinette said she feels alone much of the time and finds it hard to go on, “to just have a void in your heart.”
Bozonier’s stepfather, Luis Guzman, said Vigil’s action wasn’t an accident, and compared her car to the airliners on 9/11. He said he sees his wife suffer every day from morning until night. “It’s unbearable,” he said. “I don’t know how we’re going to survive through this.”
Bozonier was “a kind and generous young man” who would tip restaurant cooks, said his uncle, Dave Archuleta.
Defense attorney Fran Simonet said she has never believed in a client’s remorse as much as she has with Vigil, and said she believed Vigil was “terrified” and not acting with bad intentions as her car lurched forward.
“I had real mixed feelings about Miss Vigil accepting the plea in this case,” said Simonet, adding that vehicular homicide seemed like a more appropriate charge.
Deputy District Attorney Jess Redman pointed to Vigil’s role as a “willing participant in the fight and where it took place” and her “conscious decision to move that car.”
“Miss Vigil knocked that first domino down that resulted in the death of Nathan Bozonier,” Redman said. “Were it not for Lakiesha Vigil, who knows what would have happened?”
Vigil addressed some of her remarks to the judge and some directly to Bozonier’s family.
“I’m not going to stand here and beg for mercy and ‘oh, poor me,’” she said. “My actions have hurt this family.”
“I lost my son,” she said. “I know what that mother is going through. I know you guys will never forgive me. I never intended something like this to happen.”
Vigil, who earlier in life lost her mother after being forced to make a decision about continuing life support, and who recently found her jail cellmate dead by suicide, laid her head on the court lectern at one point during her statement.
“I was not intentionally trying to hurt anybody,” she told Bozonier’s family. “I was raising three girls by myself.”
“Sincerely,” she said, “I apologize.”
Scott Gilbert can be reached at scottg@metronorthnews.com