By Doug Miller
Royce Quigua, 31, agreed to plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the March 13, 2005, death of Donald "Danny" Hennessy, 76, the father of Long Beach City Councilman Jim Hennessy. Quigua will reportedly receive a sentence of 18 to 54 months in prison.
Quigua hit Hennessy while fleeing police officers in a high-speed chase through Woodside, his attorney said. He was driving the wrong way up a one-way street at the time.
Hennessy's widow, Margaret, who is Jim Hennessy's step-mother, has filed a wrongful-death suit against the New York City Police Department, calling the police chase reckless and unnecessary.
Jim Hennessy said last week that the family was initially relieved to not have to endure a trial, until a Daily News article about the plea deal riled them up. In the article, Quigua's attorney, Bruce Eiber, was quoted as saying "[Quigua] feels some degree of culpability and remorse, but he was pulled over for no reason by an officer in an unmarked police car who was going for his gun."
The tone of the quote, Jim Hennessy said, has spurred Donald's friends and family to fight the plea deal. His former colleagues in the New York City hotel workers' union, as well as his neighbors in Woodside and the friends of his nine children and 20 grandchildren, have begun a leafletting movement to pack the courtroom for Quigua's sentencing in Queens Jan. 24.
"My father's wife has been granted permission to make a victim's impact statement," Jim Hennessy said. "I have been asked to do so on behalf of my father's children, and my niece will do so on behalf of his grandchildren."
Danny Hennessy was a bartender in Manhattan for decades, and over the years became well known in some gilded circles. He ran the bar at the Helmsley Palace on Madison Avenue for several years, and was a friend and confidant of Leona Helmsley, her spokesman confirmed. As such, the family's plight has been profiled in such publications as the Irish Voice and has become a pet cause of the New York Post's Steve Dunleavy.
Eiber, reached in his Fresh Meadows office, said he respected the family's anger but insisted that his client "is extremely remorseful ... my client feels terrible as a result of this incident. Any suggestion otherwise is completely false."
Eiber also fingered the NYPD as being ultimately responsible for Hennessy's death. "The unfortunate part of this incident is it started with my client doing absolutely nothing wrong," Eiber said. "He was peacefully driving at a safe speed in a quiet residential community, and a police officer without any cause whatsoever pulled him over. And the police have changed their story three or four times as to why, and the latest reason was, 'He looked out the window funny.'
"And what I've told the district attorney and the judge is that under identical circumstances, I would have fled the scene in my automobile, just like my client did."
Eiber cited an incident that took place in Franklin Square last Jan. 5 in which a man wearing a police uniform robbed and murdered James Gottlieb, 50. "Unfortunately, it was in the chase when this incident occurred," Eiber said. "I think, if [Quigua] had to do it all over again, when he heard the thud he would have stopped, as I would have done."
Jim Hennessy said there was a greater principle involved. "Justice has to be served," he said. "Did he wake up that morning and say, 'I'm going to kill Dan Hennessy?' No. But he did make a grave mistake, and I think he should get the maximum sentence."
Quigua's sentencing hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Jan. 24 in Queens Criminal Court on Queens Boulevard, room TAP-C, with Judge Robert Hanophy presiding.
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