Stepdad gets 18 months for running down girl in melee over ...
"It was not the way to express it, but at least he cared." - defense attorney Michael Kennedy
A man who stepped in the middle of a scrap involving his stepdaughter and another girl at Sojourner Truth Academy in Uptown -- then stepped on the gas and smacked into a girl on Napoleon Avenue -- was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in jail. Paul Amar, 43, surrendered to sheriff's deputies after Criminal District Judge Keva Landrum-Johnson handed down the sentence.
Amar pleaded guilty to aggravated battery and simple battery from what turned into a May 15 melee between families of the two high school girls, who had gotten into a spat over a posting on the mobile photo-sharing program Instagram.
The noontime brawl spilled from the parking lot of the nearby Freret Market into the middle of Napoleon Avenue.
A witness said Amar and the girl's mother arrived and quickly got into it with the mother and older brother of the?girl she'd been fighting.
The brother also was a student at Sojourner, and both girls ended up joining the skirmish. The Recovery School District charter school,?at Jena and Freret streets, was shuttered this year.
Hair was pulled, bricks were thrown, and fists. Then, Amar jumped in his truck with a small child inside and began heading the wrong way down Napoleon Avenue.
Police said Amar had argued with the 18-year-old male student because he suspected him of dating his daughter. He threatened the boy, then tried to run him over with his truck, but missed and hit his sister, police said.
She was taken to the hospital with apparently minor injuries.
The simple battery charge stemmed from fisticuffs?between Amar and the male student, said Amar's attorney, Michael Kennedy. Only Amar was arrested, Kennedy said.
"We are very pleased with the sentence that Mr. Amar received. At the heart of the matter, as shocking as the crime may have been to the general public, it does truly seem to have grown out of honest care and concern for his family," Kennedy said.
"And while Mr. Amar took that a couple of steps too far ... It was not the way to express it, but at least he cared."
Aggravated battery carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.
Amar was still being booked late Tuesday.
Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/10/stepdad_gets_18_months_for_run.html
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