Walking across the parking lot of a Hollywood diner, Roderick Poole was on his way to dinner with his wife on Mother's Day when a car backed out of a parking space and bumped into a restaurant worker standing nearby.
"Watch it!" Poole called out. The vehicle's driver apologized to the worker but exchanged angry words with Poole.
In the next few moments, the car's driver and her husband assaulted Poole before speeding off with their young son in the back seat, leaving the English-born guitarist lying in the parking lot clutching his stomach. Poole, 45, had been fatally stabbed.
On Tuesday, Poole's wife stood in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom and confronted the couple convicted in the killing, telling the court that her husband had not been looking for a fight that May 2007 evening but was trying to speak up for a stranger.
"He would speak for the underdog, he would speak for people who needed to be defended," Lisa Ladaw said as friends wept quietly in the audience behind her. "He was my best friend. He was my life."
During an emotional hearing, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael E. Pastor sentenced Michael and Angela Sheridan to separate prison terms, describing their actions as "cowardly" and unprovoked.
"The conduct is egregious beyond words," Pastor said as he sentenced Michael Sheridan to 15 years to life for second-degree murder. "The victim in this case, Mr. Poole, was particularly vulnerable at the time he was attacked brutally by Mr. Sheridan."
Michael Sheridan, 27, was accused of stabbing Poole with a wooden-handled steak knife. But Pastor described Sheridan's wife as the "provocateur" in the confrontation and sentenced her to three years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
Minutes before receiving her sentence, Angela Sheridan, a 26-year-old file clerk at a downtown law firm, apologized for her actions. Sitting in dark blue jail scrubs with her hands cuffed behind her, she asked Poole's family for forgiveness and pleaded for leniency from the judge.
"I'm so sorry this has happened," she said, reading from a statement. "I never thought my decision to get out of the car would have such a tragic outcome."
Her defense attorney argued that her client had snapped that night because Poole called her "bitch," but she never intended to kill him.
