Copiague man sentenced to 17 years in fatal shooting

Lisa LaCourt held a box containing her son Joseph Scorzelli's ashes as she spoke yesterday in a Riverside courtroon before a Copiague man was sentenced to 17 years in prison for fatally shooting her son two years ago.

"This is what my son was reduced to," LaCourt, of Copiague, told State Supreme Court Justice C. Randall Hinrichs in Suffolk County Court. "My family will never be the same. . . . What was done to me kind of made me lose my purpose in life."

Minutes later, in a statement that LaCourt later said surprised her, Darrian Bennett apologized to Scorzelli's family, as well as his own, for the shooting in Copiague that killed the aspiring electrician and volunteer firefighter who was five days shy of his 18th birthday.

"I have changed and become a different person already," said Bennett, 22. "He did not deserve to die, and I was wrong."

Bennett pleaded guilty in March to first-degree manslaughter and other charges for shooting Scorzelli, 17, on Nov. 15, 2008, in front of a church on Pinelawn Avenue in Copiague, just blocks from Scorzelli's home.

Authorities said Bennett shot Scorzelli four times in a dispute over the price of marijuana that Scorzelli wanted to purchase from Bennett.

Before sentencing Bennett, Hinrichs refused to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea. In an unrelated case, Bennett faces weapons charges in Queens.

About a dozen of Scorzelli's family members and friends attended the sentencing. His sister, Danielle Scorzelli, 24, of upstate Cortland, wore a sweatshirt bearing her brother's picture and the phrase "You are forever our angel."

"You stole the best years of his life," she said to Bennett in court.

LaCourt said Bennett's sentence matched her son's age when he died. "Seventeen years we spent loving him and he spent loving us," she said.

Outside court, LaCourt said Bennett's statement in court caught her by surprise. She said she had expected Bennett to make only an "obligatory apology" to her family.

"It was more than I expected," she said. "It kind of sounded sincere. I don't hate him."