San Diego California DUI criminal defense attorneys find death cases the hardest to deal with at time of sentencing.

A young LA-based lady had been struck by a suspected San Diego drunk driver.

A neurosurgeon told them that Whitney Young, a student at Mesa College, had suffered massive brain injuries and that they should assume she was going to die. What the doctor couldn't tell the parents was when.

Whitney Young, 19, an aspiring teacher from Palos Verdes Estates, clung to life for four days as dozens of friends and family members flocked to her bedside.

Young died Nov. 16, hours after Eric Joseph Leeman, the man accused of causing her death, was arrested in the College Area, not far from where Young was struck.

At the end of an emotional hearing, Judge Peter C. Deddeh sentenced Leeman to 11 years in prison. Leeman pleaded guilty Aug. 23 to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and admitted he fled the site of the collision.

He could have been sent to prison for up to 15 years.

Leeman, 21, originally was charged with second-degree murder, but the charge was dropped in exchange for the guilty plea. Had he been convicted of second-degree murder, Leeman could have been sent to prison for 15 years to life.

Witnesses testified during a preliminary hearing in March that a car hit Young about 3:15 a.m. Nov. 12 as she and a group of friends crossed Montezuma Road near Rockford Drive. The car didn't stop or slow down.

Pieces of the car broke off on impact. A San Diego police officer later saw in a nearby driveway a 1997 BMW that matched the description of the one that hit Young.

Leeman, who was not taking college classes or working at the time, was arrested at his College Area home.

Witnesses testified that they had seen him drinking heavily at a party hours before the collision.

His voice cracking with emotion, Leeman apologized in court for the pain he caused Young's family. He said he initially lied to friends and family about the damage to his car “not out of self-preservation, but out of shock because I caused the death of another human being.”