From Andy Furillo

A judge today sentenced Tyrone Adam Palmer to 22 years and four months to life in prison for running a car with three teenaged girls off the road two years ago, killing one, leaving a second in a persistent vegetative state and severely injuring the third.

Palmer (photo bottom right), who was convicted of second-degree murder last month by a Sacramento Superior Court jury, tearfully apologized to the mother of Kailey McGagin (teen at far right in photo at bottom), the 17-year-old girl who died in the Oct. 13, 2007, hit-and-run on Winding Way in Carmichael, but then told Judge David De Alba that he never knew the girls' car crashed.

The apology came when Kailey's sobbing mother, Erin McGagin, told the court that "I just want him to remember" what he did," to which Palmer turned around and sobbingly replied, "I'll never forget. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about it. I'm so sorry."

The defendant's apology at first prompted Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi to tell the court that "I give Mr. Palmer and lot of credit" and that "I respect" the defendant for what appeared to be a heart-felt remark.

"It's something a lot of victims never get to see or hear," Grippi said.

Then, when the judge asked Palmer if there was anything he wanted to say directly to the court, the defendant sought to profess his innocence to the murder conviction, saying "I never saw them crash" and that he wasn't aware that anybody died until he heard it on the TV news the next day.

"It happened behind me," Palmer said.

As soon as Palmer finished, the prosecutor told De Alba, "I spoke too soon about my respect for Mr. Palmer. He came back to the same resounding theme that it's not his fault," Grippi said.

The prosecutor said that a friend of Palmer's rebutted the claim that he didn't know anything about the crash that he told the friend about it that night before it was ever on the news.

Grippi said Palmer's friend told investigators that the defendant commented that the girls "were screwing with him and they got into a wreck or something."

"For him to make this statement now is hard to take," Grippi said.

Palmer, 40, gave chase to the girls' car after one of them threw an egg at him while he was in the process of stealing a license plate off a utility trailer. The girls had just dropped off a friend at her Carmichael residence in the pre-dawn hours after a night of partying and drinking.

Seychelle Curry (middle teen in photo), the driver of the car, was left in a comatose state as a result of the crash. The other passenger in the car, Valerie Schmidt (teen at left in photo), now 19, sustained two broken legs and severe facial cuts.