Former NBA star Mookie Blaylock sentenced to 7 years for killing woman in head-on crash
Former NBA star Mookie Blaylock sentenced to 7 years for killing woman in head-on crash
Former National Basketball Association star Mookie Blaylock was sentenced on Monday to seven years in a Georgia prison followed by eight years of probation for killing a woman in a head-on traffic crash last year, court records show.
Blaylock, known for his defensive prowess during a 13-year NBA career that ended in 2002, knew he should not have been driving due to a seizure disorder when his SUV crossed the center line and collided with a minivan outside Atlanta in May 2013, authorities have said.
Monica Murphy, a mother of five who was a passenger in the other vehicle, died of her injuries hours after the accident, authorities have said. Blaylock was in critical condition after the crash but recovered.
Blaylock, 47, pleaded guilty on Monday to vehicular homicide and serious injury by vehicle, according to Clayton County court records.
At the time of the crash, he faced an arrest warrant for failure to appear in court on drug possession and drunken-driving charges in a nearby county, according to police.
Authorities never cited alcohol as playing a role in the fatal accident.
Blaylock may only spend three years in prison if he attends alcohol abuse counseling and meets other criteria, lawyer Amanda Palmer told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
‘He has admitted he has a problem with alcohol and he is getting treatment for that,’ Palmer told the newspaper, and also mentioned a DI arrest as well as ‘several past DUI convictions.’
However, she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he tested negative for alcohol in the 2013 incident.
