A Michigan groom has been sentenced to at least 30 years in prison after murdering his best friend on his wedding night.
James Shirah, 24, held back tears as he insisted he hadn’t meant to kill his longtime friend and groomsman Terry Taylor, 29, when he drove his SUV into him following his wedding reception in Flint, reported Michigan Live.
“I will forever be sorry. It was not intentional. That was my best friend. I accept full responsibility for my actions that night,” Shirah, who had no prior felonies or misdemeanors, told the jury during his sentencing hearing Monday.
Taylor, a father of four with a fiancée, died after Shirah mowed him down in his car, sending him flying into the air, following a drunken argument on the night of the wedding on Aug. 30, 2024. It wasn’t clear what the two were arguing over.
Shirah, who had been drinking all day, got behind the wheel and drove away from the scene for around a minute following the argument, before returning and crashing into Taylor.
“When I got to him all I could see was blood,” Taylor’s cousin, Eren Taylor, told the jury in a victim impact statement delivered Monday as she recalled the day of the crash.
“I hope they throw the book at you,” she told Shirah, as she described seeing first responders performing CPR on Taylor as something she “will never forget.”
Shirah’s defense attorneys argued the crash wasn’t intentional, while prosecutors said that he had had time to reflect before returning to the scene in his SUV.
“Mr. Shirah, I believe that you are not a criminal. You are, however, a killer,” Judge Khary L. Hanible told the defendant during the hearing at Genesee County Circuit Court.
Shirah was sentenced to 30 to 45 years in prison for second-degree murder and 10 to 15 years each for operating without a license causing death and failing to stop at the scene of an accident resulting in death.
Each sentence will run concurrently.
Family members of both Shirah and Taylor were in the public gallery as they watched the sentencing.
Shirah’s wife, Savanah Collier, pleaded no contest separately to one count of accessory after the fact, and will be sentenced on May 26.
