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CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
Michael Clark was handcuffed before being taken to jail yesterday. He was sentenced to one year in jail for providing the alcohol that killed 15-year-old Makamae Ah Mook Sang. At right is his lawyer, Brook Hart.
Michael Clark said he is sorry he provided so much liquor to 15-year-old Makamae Ah Mook Sang that it caused her death by alcohol poisoning.
"I feel terrible about what happened, and I pray for your daughter," Clark told Ah Mook Sang’s mother, Tracy, in Circuit Court yesterday.
Tracy Ah Mook Sang had words of forgiveness: "My hope and prayer that as you go into jail for the year that you come to know God in the way that I do and that your life will be changed."
But Circuit Judge Richard Pollack was not so sure about how sorry Clark was.
"Based on everything that’s been put forth before me, I cannot conclude one way or another whether or not you have such an understanding of the actual consequences of your conduct or you have genuine remorse for your actions," Pollack said.
Pollack sentenced the 25-year-old Clark yesterday to one year in jail, noting he hopes Clark spends the time contemplating the results of his conduct — providing alcohol to Ah Mook Sang and four other teenage girls July 30 at a party in his parents’ Hawaii Kai home.
Ah Mook Sang died from alcohol poisoning. Her blood-alcohol content was 0.433, more than five times the minimum level at which state law considers a person too drunk to drive.
In addition to the one year in jail, Pollack fined Clark $10,000 and ordered him to pay $1,850 in restitution to Ah Mook Sang’s family and perform 200 hours of community service when he gets out of jail.
Pollack also sentenced Clark to five years of probation, including one year in jail, for assaulting a security guard and a Honolulu police officer at the Ala Moana Hotel in 2007 in an incident that started with a report of him urinating in a hotel elevator.
Clark will serve the sentence for the Ala Moana Hotel incident concurrently, according to his plea agreements for both cases.
He paid the fine and restitution yesterday just before a state deputy sheriff took him away to start serving his jail term.
His lawyer, Brook Hart, said both incidents stem from Clark’s own alcohol abuse. He said Clark stopped drinking and joined Alcoholics Anonymous in August. He has also been getting therapy.
And Clark promised, as Pollack ordered, that when he gets out of jail, he will speak to students at different schools about the dangers of underage drinking.
