REDWOOD CITY — A man was sentenced Tuesday to eight years in prison for participating in a 2022 street race that resulted in the fiery deaths of the parents of seven-year-old twins.
Kyle Harrison, 25, had pleaded no contest to two counts of felony vehicular manslaughter and one count of felony engaging in a speed contest that results in death or great bodily injury more than two years after racing a teenage boy he met at a stoplight, which led to the teenager’s car crashing into the car of Greg Ammen, 44, and Grace Spiridon, 42.
“I can tell he’s clearly remorseful,” San Mateo County Judge Elizabeth Lee said at the sentencing hearing. “He had the maturity to make a different decision that night … He could have disengaged.”
The crash occurred Nov. 4, 2022 in Redwood City, and also injured the couple’s twin daughters, one of whom had to crawl over her father’s body to escape the mangled car. The car that crashed into the family was speeding at more than 100 miles per hour on a street with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour, throwing their car back over 100 feet, according to the prosecution’s sentencing memorandum.
Harrison’s defense attorney, Tennille Duffy, declined to comment on his sentence. Lucas King, a San Mateo County deputy district attorney, said that the family was “appreciative” and “happy” with the sentence but added that they do not “harbor the same resentment against Kyle Harrison as they do against the juvenile.”
Cesar Morales, 20, who was 17 years old when he crashed his car into Ammen and Spiridon’s vehicle during the street race, was sentenced to 90 days of electronic home monitoring last month after being convicted of two counts of felony manslaughter. The DA’s office had inititally sought to try Morales as an adult but the judge declined.
“I do think it was a fair and just sentence (for Harrison),” King said in an interview. “The family came away, I wouldn’t say happy, because there’s no happy ending to this, but as close to that as you could be. They were appreciative of the sentencing hearing today and the result.”
He noted that the judge chose the maximum sentence available for Harrison’s charges.
“I hope that it brings some closure to them, but I’m not certain that anything can,” he added.
Harrison’s sentence included consecutive terms of six years for one count of vehicular manslaughter, one year and four months for a second count of vehicular manslaughter and eight months for one felony count of engaging in a speed contest.
The crash left a lasting impact on the orphaned seven-year-old twins, family members detailed in impact statements at the hearing.
Audience members wiped tears from their eyes as family members and friends shared their statements with the judge and the prosecution played a recording of the twin girls’ statements. The prosecution also played a video showing photographs of Ammen and Spiridon with their daughters after their aunt and uncle, who now care for them, shared that one of the twins now experiences intense night terrors.
“I miss their smile. I miss their hug,” one of the twins said in the recording of their statements.
“It took away a lot of our hope, a lot of just everything,” said the other twin. “It feels like everything was taken away.”
The girls will have to relive the crash for the rest of their lives, said one family member.
“I find myself overwhelmed with blatant disappointment,” said Liza Spiridon, Grace Spiridon’s sister, in her statement to the court, expressing disappointment in the short sentence given to Morales. “The emotional scars and trauma [the girls] carry are beyond comprehension.”
Spiridon asked the court to consider additions to Harrison’s sentence, including a future opportunity for the twin girls to talk with him when they feel ready, as well as a community service requirement and writing apology letters. Lee later declined to add those stipulations to Harrison’s sentence but encouraged Harrison and the family of Ammen and Spiridon to engage in some form of restorative justice even though she had no avenue to mandate it as part of his sentence.
“I hope as we move forward there can be some healing,” Lee said.
While handcuffed to his chair and wearing an orange jumpsuit, Harrison said that he was speaking “not to make excuses.”
“It is no exaggeration that every waking moment I have is a reflection of my actions,” Harrison said. “Two wonderful parents are no longer here because of me … . This is a fact that I will carry for the rest of my life.”
In her own statement, his mother, Susan Harrison, added that “not one day goes by when we are not all affected by that moment in time.”
“I know in my heart that Kyle knows now what he did was wrong and very dangerous,” she added.
A wrongful death lawsuit was filed against Morales and Harrison, as well as Morales’s parents and other juveniles in his car, in 2023 for their alleged roles in the crash. That case is still pending.