A 39-year-old drunken driver who fatally struck a California Highway Patrol officer writing a ticket on the shoulder of Interstate 15 in Lake Elsinore was sentenced Friday, Oct. 1, to 15 years to life in state prison.
Michael Joseph Callahan of Winchester was convicted in August of second-degree murder and a sentence-enhancing great bodily injury allegation for the 2019 death of 53-year-old Steve Lawrence Licon of Perris.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Timothy Freer at the Southwest Justice Center in Murrieta imposed the sentence required by law.
Deputy District Attorney Carlos Managas told jurors in his closing argument in August that Callahan’s friends “warned him, implored him, begged him not to get behind the wheel of his car” on April 6, 2019.
The defendant had spent
