Driver sentenced to prison for deliberately causing several crashes on busy State College road
A Centre County man diagnosed with schizophrenia was sentenced Tuesday to at least 2 1/2 years in state prison for deliberately crashing into three drivers on one of the busiest roads in State College.
Letra A. Renninger, 29, of Ferguson Township, was sentenced by Centre County Judge Brian Marshall to a maximum of five years in state prison. He received credit for about 11 months served at the Centre County Correctional Facility.
He is not eligible for the Recidivism Risk Reduction Incentive, a program that could have reduced his minimum sentence. Renninger was also sentenced to one year of probation and was ordered to pay more than $10,100 in restitution.
He did not offer an apology before his sentence was handed down.
“I was in an extremely stressful environment at the home,” Renninger said of his conviction for damaging thousands of dollars’ worth of a roommate’s property.
He later added: “I couldn’t get the help I needed.”
Renninger intentionally sped through a red light at the intersection of South Atherton Street and South Allen Street on Dec. 6, borough police wrote in an affidavit of probable cause. He crossed into northbound traffic and hit three other drivers.
Nobody was seriously injured, but each of the three vehicles Renninger hit were severely damaged. One driver was treated for bruises and a burn, the second was treated for a wrist and shoulder injury and another had a concussion, Centre County First Assistant District Attorney Sean McGraw said.
“I feel very lucky to have been able to walk away from the car wreck,” one of the drivers wrote in a statement sent to Marshall. “I and people in several other vehicles hit by Renninger could have been killed.”
Renninger told investigators he “absolutely meant to do that,” while adding he did not “give a f--- anymore.” He pleaded guilty to four counts of criminal mischief and three counts of recklessly endangering another person.
The crash was deliberate, but Centre County Assistant Public Defender Rebecca Bain said Renninger did not want to injure anyone. He was “suffering from a mental health episode,” she wrote in a memo to Marshall.
Renninger was released from jail less than a hour before the crash, against his wishes. He was “hearing voices,” hallucinating and tried to kill himself, Bain wrote.
She even asked a Centre County judge to appoint a psychiatrist to evaluate Renninger’s competency, writing in a December document she believed Renninger could not understand the nature of the charges filed against him.
“He has come leaps and bounds with his mental health,” she said of his time at the county jail. Once released from prison, Bain said Renninger hopes to receive treatment from The Meadows Psychiatric Center.