LA GRANGE, Ky. (AP) -- After spending less than 11 years behind bars, the man convicted of the nation's deadliest drunken driving accident, a head-on collision that killed 27 people, walked out of prison Wednesday as a free man.
Larry Mahoney walked down the steps in front of the Kentucky State Reformatory, carrying his possession in two brown paper bags. He was driven away in a car with tinted windows.Mahoney, now 46, served nine years and six months in prison and spent nearly a year in jail before his trial. He earned his early release with good behavior and education.
Mahoney, whose blood alcohol content was nearly three times the legal limit, drove his pickup truck the wrong direction on Interstate 71 on May 14, 1988, and slammed into a bus that was taking 67 people home from a church outing to an amusement park north of Cincinnati.
He claims to have no memory of the crash, learning of it only after he woke up in a hospital with his own relatively minor injuries.
Mahoney is believed to be staying with his parents, who live in his former hometown of Worthville, in northern Kentucky, said State Corrections Department spokeswoman Carol Czirr.
Karolyn Nunnallee said she is no longer angry at Mahoney for taking the life of her daughter, Patty, but she is deeply disturbed about a system that sentenced him to only 16 years in prison and released him so early.
Prosecutors initially considered seeking the death penalty for Mahoney but concluded they could not make it stick. The jury convicted him of manslaughter, assault and wanton endangerment.
"We were told it would be hundreds of years," Nunnallee said last week. "So I was really prepared for him to spend his life in prison."
Before he was up for parole in 1997, Mahoney spoke about possibly making public appearances to talk about the dangers of drunken driving. After he was denied early release, Mahoney refused all interview requests.
Nunnallee, who now lives in Florida, has become a crusader as president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.