Ian Smith, co-owner of the Atilis Gym defying New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s shutdown order, and hailed as a hero on Fox News, was sentenced to more than five years in prison for killing someone while driving drunk in 2007.
Brian has noted how all week Fox News has been slobbering over Smith and his partner and cheering them on to continue defying New Jersey’s shutdown law – meant to save lives during the coronavirus pandemic, mind you.
Now Smith’s past, in which he killed someone while driving drunk, pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to five and a half years in prison, has come to light. From NJ.com:
Smith said the fatal crash in 2007 happened after he had been drinking at his dorm room at night and didn’t realize when he got up in the morning that he still had alcohol in his system. “It’s something that I accept full responsibility for. And to anyone out there who hates me, you are completely justified in doing so, but I do want to set the details straight,” Smith said in [an Instagram video].
“My actions caused the death of a young man and broke the hearts of an entire community, and that’s something they’ll never ever fully recover from,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do except try to live a good life and give back and promote as much love and positivity in the world as I can.”
It’s hard for me to see how defying a state health order meant to protect lives from COVID-19 is giving back positivity. And I’m not the only one. Members of victim Kevin Ade’s family think so too. (The 19 year-old Ade was killed when Smith ran a stop sign.)
From the New York Post:
Ade’s family, some of whom hoped Smith would turn his life around, took offense at his open defiance of the state lockdown law.
“It shows he has no regard for the law,” Robert Henchy, the teen’s uncle, told nj.com. “He drove drunk, killed somebody, gets probably one of the lightest sentences I’ve ever seen. And now, 13 years later, you’re out defying the law again. I just don’t get it.”
I hate to say it, but that makes Smith a perfect fit for the Fox News Culture of Death.
You can watch Fox & Friends slobber over him below, from the May 21, 2020 show. Or you can just read Brian’s account of it here.
