MPJ testifies as Coban Porter gets max sentence for fatal crash
Apr 19, 2024, 1:03 PM | Updated: 1:04 pm
Coban Porter, a younger brother of Michael Porter Jr., was sentenced to six years in prison Friday for killing a woman in a drunken car crash last year as the family’s week in the news cycle continues.
Porter, 22, pled guilty to vehicular homicide and vehicular assault earlier this year which lowered his max sentence down from 12 years in prison to the eight he was given. He will serve the sentences for the two crimes concurrently. Porter apologized and took responsibility for the collision going as far as to admit that it wasn’t an accident but a series of awful choices he made that ended the life of 42-year-old Uber driver Kathy Limon Rothman.
Porter had a blood-alcohol level of .19—more than twice the legal limit of .08—when he ran a light that had been red for more than 20 seconds while traveling 20 MPH over the speed limit at the intersection of South University and Buchtel boulevards.
Denver Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. was one of the many people to speak at Friday’s hearing. He shared that when he first learned of the crash the police officer telling him that Coban had been involved in a fatal crash did not identify whose life was lost, leading MPJ to believe that he had lost his brother.
“I understand your family’s pain and hurt,” the NBA player said in testimony as reported by Westword. “When he didn’t specify what it was, I felt that. I know that if I were in your shoes and it was reversed, I would have a lot of feelings as well.”
Coban Porter was playing basketball at the University of Denver and attending school there at the time of the 2023 crash. Porter and the Crimson and Gold Tavern, a bar in the area that serves many of his peers, were named in a lawsuit by Rothman’s family and the passenger in the vehicle at the time of the crash. They claim Porter was overserved that evening.
“Even though he made choices, there’s a lot of people in life who have made bad choices, and it doesn’t end up the way this did,” Michael Porter Jr. said in testimony as reported by Westword. “I remember during the whole process, I was just thinking, man, I wish it was me.”
Another one of MPJ’s brothers, Jontay Porter, was banned from the NBA for life earlier this week. The NBA found that he was providing information to bettors, limited his own participation in games to cash in on wagers and gambled against his Toronto Raptors while using an associate’s account while being an employee of the organization.
