NEW YORK — The unlicensed driver who fatally mowed down “Gone Girl” actress Lisa Banes with his moped on a Manhattan street was sentenced to one to three years in prison Wednesday — infuriating her loved ones after he tried to dodge accountability one last time.
The sentence handed down to Brian Boyd by state Supreme Court Judge Gregory Carro came over objections from prosecutors. They said the 27-year-old’s lies to probation officials, after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and leaving the scene in September, negated his plea deal.
Boyd hit Banes, 65, while she was in the crosswalk after he blew a red light at West 64th Street and Amsterdam Avenue on June 4, 2021. Surveillance video shows him fall off his unregistered electric scooter, dust himself off, take a few steps to look at the actress on the ground covered in blood, and take off.
He left to get his bike fixed in Harlem, where he was captured on video popping open a beer with his teeth.
“When he left Lisa Banes in the roadway, other vehicles were starting to ride around her body,” said Assistant District Attorney Erin LaFarge, who questioned whether Boyd had seen the footage.
“We agree he has not learned anything from this experience, and that is a terrifying thought.”
When Boyd met with probation officials in October, as part of his deal, he claimed the light was yellow when he struck Banes, that he’d tried to help her, and that she was wearing headphones and looking at her phone, Carro said. None of it was true. The judge declined to impose a steeper sentence.
In her victim impact statement, Banes’ wife Kathryn Kranhold told the judge that Boyd’s actions showed he cared more about his broken bike than her dying spouse.
Banes was on her way to meet Kranhold and friends when Boyd struck her. She died at Mount Sinai-Morningside Hospital 10 days later. He was arrested more than a month later.
Kranhold flew in from Los Angeles, where she and Banes moved in 2011, to attend all of the court hearings. She said her wife’s death had left a “gaping hole” in her life and the lives of everyone who “deeply and profoundly” loved her.
“You all would have loved her if you met her before Brian Boyd killed her,” Kranhold told a packed courtroom.
She said she and Banes’ love story began in New York in 2006. They entered into a domestic partnership in 2010 and married at City Hall a few years later.
“Lisa, you really did have to experience her,” said Kranhold recalled. “Listen to her sing a song, tell a story. Teach you how to shoot a Red Ryder BB gun, rant about injustice and inequality.”
“Her love for life was infectious,” Kranhold said. “... She was a fierce defender of justice for everyone. She had apps on her phone so she could identify the stars and flowers. She dragged me outside to look at the moon in L.A., and just gaze at it. She wanted others to do the same.”
Kranhold was blocks from the scene and spoke to Banes as she walked to meet her through Lincoln Center. When she didn’t turn up, Kranhold called her phone again and a police officer answered.
“When I got to the emergency room and went into her room, her hair was bloodied,” she said. “She was on life support in a coma. My life stopped at that moment.”
Banes was as generous in death as she was in life. She donated her organs, including her eyes, her wife said.
Boyd offered a brief apology, “I’m extremely sorry, and I don’t really have the words. I’m sorry.”
A Juilliard alum who grew up in Colorado, Banes was inducted into the Off-Broadway Hall of Fame in June. She starred in 1988′s “Cocktail” in addition to numerous other television and Broadway credits. She was in town to perform in a two-woman show at the Manhattan Theater Club called “The Niceties” when she died.
Before the crash, Banes was out celebrating her friend, director Kimberly Senior’s birthday.
“On the day itself, it had been so dark and so rainy — and the sun breaks through,” Senior recalled. “She just kind of had this skip in her step, pays the bill and kind of has a ‘toodle-oo’ as she walks out the door into her bright future,” Senior told the New York Daily News.
“That’s what I was left with in that moment, not even knowing what was going to happen next, or that I had been given a gift being in her company.”
Senior said Banes’ special talent was seeing the good in everyone, and showing it to them when they couldn’t see it.
“The mirror that she held up for people was the most beautiful version of themselves,” said Senior. “You always left a conversation with Lisa knowing better who you are.”
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