A man was convicted of a speeding accident that killed a Royal Palm woman

Tanner Badgley parked along the side of the road, waiting for a tow truck. A drunk driver speeding home from a strip club crashed into her car, which was traveling at 90 miles per hour.

WEST PALM BEACH — Almost no one who spoke at Emmett Christian Jr.’s sentencing hearing cried. Received more than three decades of imprisonment for drunk, at high speed who killed the young mother of two, Christian began to cry before telling the judge his name.

He said he would rather die on July 28, 2023 than Tanner Badgley. Distracted by the passenger in the back seat of his Christian sedan crashed into Badgley’s parked pickup truck at 90 mph, throwing a 23-year-old woman through the windshield and onto the pavement of an intersection in The Acreage.

“We will never come to terms with losing her,” said Christina Badgley, Tanner’s sister-in-law. “We will miss her far longer than we had the privilege of knowing her.”

Thursday’s hearing was Christian’s last chance to ask District Judge Sarah Willis for a lesser sentence than the 12 years recommended by prosecutors. Instead of begging for mercy, as those close to him had done, he spoke to the Badgley family.

“No amount of apologies could bring her back,” he said. “But I really regret what I did. I wish it was me who died that day.”

The victim was a beloved member of the Badgley family long before she married them

Christian pleaded guilty Thursday to involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide and driving under the influence, charges that carry a maximum of 31 years in state prison. He did so without a plea deal with prosecutors, leaving Willis to decide his own fate.

Before doing so, she heard testimony from family and friends devastated by Badgley’s death.

Born Tanner Nashkiewicz and raised in Royal Palm Beach, Badgley was one of four siblings. All who testified Thursday said she was a sister to many others, including the Badgley daughters, a group of girls who loved, teased and played with her long before she married their brother Joe.

“She was the best friend my little sister ever had,” Nikki Badgley said. “I used to joke that they were two halves of a complete idiot, but the truth is, I think they really were each other’s other halves.”

Badgley’s mother, Jennifer Wright, said Badgley is more than her daughter. She was her best friend, with whom Wright would shop, watch TV, play cards and FaceTime while she made dinner.

Badgley spoke to her mother on the phone shortly before 12:30 a.m. on the night of the crash. She parked on Royal Palm Beach Boulevard North near North 57th Street with her hazard lights flashing while she, her husband and their friend waited for a tow truck to pull her brother’s car out of the ravine where it was stuck.

Christian, returning home from a strip club with passengers in the back seat, crashed his Honda Accord into a Ford F-150 that was traveling at twice the speed limit.

“She was half-laughing,” Wright said Thursday. – And then just silence.

Joe Badgley described the frantic minutes he spent performing CPR on his wife while waiting for first responders to arrive. He said he held her in his arms, begged her to stay and watched her take her last breath.

His mother, Michelle, cried during his testimony. When given a chance to speak, she called Badgley “the strongest force in this family” and briefly addressed the man responsible for her death.

“I pray that you forgive yourself someday, and I’m sad for your family, and I know that God will forgive you,” she said. “But I just don’t see in my heart that I ever will.”

The family of the hit-and-run driver is asking for four years in prison. The victim’s family wanted more

Relatives of Christian, who spoke Thursday, were openly saddened by Badgley’s death. After apologizing to her family, they spoke of Christian as they knew him—not as a drunk driver, but as a loving father to his young boy and teenage stepson, a man who never hesitated to lend a hand at his elderly home. a neighbor

“Emmett is more broken than I’ve ever seen him in my life,” said his partner, Nina Martin, who met Christian as a seventh-grader in the Virgin Islands. “The weight of knowing that he has taken a life makes him want to take his own.”

She and others said what Assistant Public Defender Daniel Kassebaum echoed during his closing arguments to the judge: Badgley’s death was a tragic accident.

They asked that Willis waive the roughly 12-year sentence recommended by state sentencing guidelines and instead sentence him to four years. Assistant State’s Attorney Storm Tropea disagreed.

“I never want to stand here and be the big bad wolf, your honor. But as a prosecutor, my job is to seek justice,” he said. “And I don’t think it would be fair to go down in that case.”

Willis did not lead immediately. She paused often, weighing the devastation of Badgley’s death against the randomness of the crime and Christian’s remorse and lack of criminal record.

She finally made a decision that left two of Badgley’s relatives watching Zoom in tears again, their microphones muted. Whether it’s four years or 31 years in prison, “it doesn’t make Mr. Christian incorrigible,” Willis said. She sentenced him to nine years.

Hannah Phillips is a public safety and criminal justice reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can contact her at [email protected].