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In a shocking development Wednesday, Aug. 31, Schoharie County Judge Peter Lynch said Nauman Hussain should spend between 16 months and four years in prison, a revelation that garnered applause from victims’ families in the courtroom.
The plea agreement had called for Hussain, the son of Prestige Limousine's owner Shahed Hussain, to serve four years of probation and no jail time, reports said.
Following the judge’s decision not to accept the deal, Hussain’s lawyers withdrew their guilty plea. A hearing to schedule the new trial was set for Wednesday, Sept. 14.
The judge also ordered Hussain to wear a GPS monitoring device in the meantime.
The October 6, 2018 crash happened in the Town of Schoharie, about 25 miles west of Albany, located in Schoharie County.
It was the deadliest crash in the US in nearly a decade - on land or in the air - since the Feb. 12, 2009 crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo, which killed 49 people.
Investigators said the SUV-style stretch limousine was going more than 100 miles per hour when its brakes failed.
The limo crossed through the intersection of State Route 30 and Route 30A and slammed into an unoccupied vehicle.
The impact was so severe it killed 17 people in the limo celebrating a birthday, along with the driver and two bystanders.
The limousine had failed a DMV inspection a month prior to the crash and should not have been on the road, the governor’s office later said.
Officials also confirmed that the driver of the limousine did not have the proper license to be operating the vehicle.
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking Republican in the House, later questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray over the agency’s relationship with the limousine company’s owner, who had served as an FBI informant.
Stefanik accused the FBI of turning a blind eye on Hussein, who is reported to have falsified safety inspection reports at the company in the months leading up to the crash.
Hussain pleaded guilty to 20 counts of criminally negligent homicide in September 2021 and has already completed a year of interim probation, according to reports.
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