California: A prostitute charged with killing a Google executive by injecting him with heroin on his yacht off the California coast pleaded guilty on Tuesday to involuntary manslaughter, court officials said.
Alix Catherine Tichelman, 27, was sentenced to six years in prison by a Santa Cruz Superior Court judge after she accepted a plea deal in which a manslaughter charge was reduced to involuntary manslaughter, a court official said.
She also pleaded guilty to several other charges, including administering a controlled substance, destroying or concealing evidence and engaging in prostitution, according to the Santa Cruz Superior Court.
Prosecutors say Tichelman, a high-priced call girl, injected Forrest Hayes, 51, with heroin during a tryst aboard his yacht off Santa Cruz in November 2013.
Prosecutors said surveillance video from the boat shows Tichelman made no effort to help Hayes, a married father of five who was an executive at the Google X research lab, and instead stepped over his body several times and sipped wine before leaving without calling 911.
Tichelman's public defenders, who did not dispute she was a prostitute, said she had no intention of hurting Hayes and maintained the drug use had been consensual. "This was an accident and a panic and she is so, so sorry," Jerry Christensen, one of Tichelman's attorneys, told reporters after the sentencing, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Tichelman was arrested last year after being contacted by a police officer posing as a potential client and agreeing to a price in excess of $1,000 authorities have said. Hayes and Tichelman are believed to have met through an online website that pairs young women with older men with money, court documents said. Tichelman could have faced 15 years of prison under the original manslaughter charge.
