Getaway driver in football star's slay sentenced

The getaway car driver in a shooting that killed a former Roosevelt High School football star was sentenced Monday to 20 years to life in prison.

A jury last summer convicted Bryan Henry, 22, of Roosevelt, of second-degree murder, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and possession of marijuana, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said Monday in a news release.

Investigators are still looking for the shooter in the Dec. 15, 2010, murder.

About 6:20 p.m., James McClenic, 19, of Roosevelt, was sitting in the front passenger seat of a Mercedes sport utility vehicle at a gas station in Hempstead when a masked man tapped on the window, prosecutors said.

The man then fired several shots into the SUV, hitting McClenic once in the right side of the neck and killing him.

The shooter ran to a Hyundai Sonata waiting half a block away on Fairview Boulevard, which Henry was driving, the news release said, and the two men fled.

Henry was arrested on Dec. 23, 2010, and convicted in August 2011.

"While Bryan Henry did not pull the trigger, he was an essential accomplice to this brutal murder," Rice said in a statement. "This sentence sends a strong message that senseless violence will not be tolerated in our communities."

McClenic had played football at Roosevelt High School and Nassau Community College.

He was in the vehicle with two friends who had driven to the gas station for gas and to make some purchases at the station's store, police said during the investigation.

With Sid Cassese