Drunken Driver Sentenced to Prison for 2010 Hit-and-Run Death of Bicyclist in Agoura

A Woodland Hills woman was sentenced to nine years in state prison Wednesday for the in Agoura Hills in 2010, according to a lawyer in the case, the Ventura County Star reported.

According to the report, Stephanie Segal, 45, was sentenced by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Mira in Malibu, said attorney Mark Hiepler. Hiepler, based in Oxnard, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Segal on behalf of Lulu Laing, victim James Laing's wife, said the Star.

Segal pleaded guilty last December to vehicular manslaughter and no contest to leaving the scene of a serious accident, Hiepler said, according to the report.

James Laing, 46, who taught at an English-as-a-second-language center on the campus of California Lutheran University, died on Oct. 23, 2010, after being struck by Segal's Mercedes-Benz as he was riding in a bicycle lane on Agoura Road near Liberty Canyon Road, said the Star.

Segal fled the scene but was apprehended by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy later that day, according to law enforcement reports, the story said.

According to the article, her blood alcohol level was 0.26 percent—more than three times the legal limit of 0.08 percent, Hiepler said.

In a written victim impact sentence, Lulu Laing, a fellow professor who lived with her husband in West Hills, wrote that her spouse's sudden death "turned my life upside down, said the report.

"Jim and I had been super happily married for 13 years," she wrote. "My friends all know we were the two happiest loving birds on earth. On Oct. 23, 2010, our perfect loving life was destroyed when my dearest husband was hit by a drunken driver," the Star reported.

Segal, who remains free from custody and has been enrolled in a drug and alcohol rehab center since the accident, is scheduled to surrender to start serving her sentence April 16, Hiepler said, said the Star.

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