Mexican actor Pablo Lyle was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for involuntary manslaughter after fatally punching a man during a road rage confrontation in Miami in 2019.
The sentence came almost four years after Lyle was charged with murder in the death of a man he struck during a traffic incident.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez announced the sentence two months after rejecting the actor’s request for a new trial and upholding the guilty verdict reached by a jury in October.
The 36-year-old Mexican telenovela star, who appeared in the Netflix crime series “Yankee,” had faced a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in prison. The judge also ordered eight years of probation, conflict resolution management and 500 hours of community service for the actor.
The actor has 30 days to appeal the sentence.
Dressed in a red jail uniform, Lyle looked calm and expressed repentance during the more than three-hour hearing. He has been detained since his Oct. 4 conviction.
“I am very sorry,” Lyle said in Spanish, looking at some of the members of Hernández family who were in the court room, among them his son. “I always pray for him and for you, with all my heart.”
After a week-long trial, a six-member jury convicted Lyle of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Juan Ricardo Hernández, 63.
Security cameras reportedly showed Lyle punch Hernández in the face after an argument on the road. Lyle claimed the punch was in self-defense, adding that he feared the man was armed and his children were scared.
According to the Associated Press, Hernández was not armed and died at the hospital four days later from a traumatic brain injury.
The victim's son was among those family members and had reportedly asked the judge to sentence Lyle to the 15-year maximum. He said he was with his father the day before the altercation.
"I didn’t want to believe it was him," Hernández’s son said of going to the hospital to see his father after receiving news of the incident.
The judge, on the other hand, said Lyle made a "poor decision" by acting "out of anger."
"The evidence shows that the action of Mr. Lyle was an act of violence," Tinkler said. "Mr. Lyle has to be held responsible for those actions."Watch video