FORT LAUDERDALE - A drunk Dolphins fan who killed a father and
his 2-year-old girl on Interstate 95 while driving home from a game
and was sentenced to 35 year to two counts of DUI manslaughter and seven other charges
On Thursday, the widow and mother of Whiting's victims asked him to accept the maximum sentence of life imprisonment, without possibility of parole.
"You need to do the right thing," Dawn Mazer told Whiting from the witness said. "I'm looking at you, you're looking at me. With [my heart] palpitating right now, you need to do the right thing.
"He took my life away," Mazer told Broward Circuit Judge John Murphy. "The punishment that I would be able to live with is for his life to be taken away."
Mazer's husband Barry Mazer, 40, and daughter Sydney were killed Nov. 19, 2006, after Whiting's car plowed into them.
Four other Mazer children, then ages 8 to 7 months, in the Dodge Durango and the family's two child care workers were injured, but survived.
Whiting, 50, was returning from a Dolphins game to his West Palm Beach home.
Emergency workers who responded to the wreck teared up Thursday when they recounted in court what they saw. They said they were struck at Whiting's "cold" demeanor after the accident.
"It was a bad scene," testified firefighter paramedic Frederick Sampson of Pompano Beach Fire Rescue. "I asked him, 'Do you realize what's going on around you' He said he really didn't know, that he was just glad the Dolphins had won."
The Miami team had beaten the Minnesota Vikings, 24-20.
A toxicologist who testified said Whiting, then an electrician, must have had 10 or 11 beers, judging by the amount of alcohol found in his blood.
The Mazers and their caretakers had spent the afternoon at Butterfly World in Coconut Creek and were going home to Boca Raton.
On I-95, just north of Sample Road, Whiting's speeding Acura plowed into the Durango, driven by the Mazers' baby nurse Tommie Kellar. The Acura veered off the road. The Durango overturned and hit a light pole.
Mazer died at the scene. Sydney was trapped inside, strapped in the baby seat that hung upside down in the overturned SUV. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Whiting was not hurt.
Whiting's attorney, Michael Metz, had been working during the two-day sentencing hearing to have him sentenced to less than the minimum 33 years' imprisonment mandated by state sentencing guidelines.
In court Thursday, more than a dozen people spoke, many to recommend the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for Whiting.
Mazer, a successful entrepreneur, was praised as a family man and community leader involved with the Pine Crest School.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Miami Dolphins fan convicted of killing a man and his 2-year-old daughter while driving home drunk from a game has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.
A Broward judge handed down 50-year-old David Whiting's sentence on Friday. He had previously pleaded no contest to two counts of DUI manslaughter and seven other charges related to the 2006 crash. Police say Whiting was speeding on I-95 when he hit a sport utility vehicle from behind, causing it to flip and roll several times.
Barry Mazer and his daughter, Sydney Mazer, both died a short time after the crash at a Broward hospital. Mazer's other four children and a nanny were also injured in the crash.
Contact "Driving Sober
to Save a Life"
PO Box 12473
Brooksville Fl.34673
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DUI Whiting took lives
