He hit a well-known restaurant manager and left him to die on the side of the road.
There was a sigh of relief from Dean LaLima's parents.
They had a feeling of a weight lifted.
Eyewitness News was the only station there capturing the emotional moments.
A judge found Raymond Kalenka guilty of leaving LaLima for dead in the road nearly a year ago.
"Everyone needs to be punished to learn from right and wrong," said Janis LaLima, the victim's mother.
"Now I just hope that the judge throws the book at him. I know at the sentencing comes I will be there with hundreds of letters of people who knew him," said John LaLima, the victim's father.
It was last August when Kalenka ran over LaLima.
The 41-year-old was walking home from a late night on the job as a manager at Grimaldi's Pizzeria in Garden City.
Kalenka told the judge he thought he had hit a speed bump.
But the judge said Thursday he wasn't buying it.
"He's a good man, he has three children, it's going to have a big effect on his life. No matter what the prosecutors say, he does feel a great deal of sorrow for the LaLima family," said Brian Davis, Kalenka's defense attorney.
