Australian "Girls Gone Wild" businessman Ryan Bowman has been sentenced to just under a year in jail for the hit-run crash on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip that left a young fashion designer dead.
Bowman fled the November 10 crash in his luxury car, a Bentley, and did not hand himself in to authorities until the next day.
Under a plea deal, the 34-year-old Queenslander was sentenced on Friday to 364 days in a private LA jail facility, rather than one of the city's notoriously overcrowded and violent prisons. With good behaviour, Bowman is expected to be released after serving a little more than six months of that.
Lauren Ann Freeman, a 21-year-old LA fashion designer, was hit by Bowman's car as she crossed Sunset Boulevard and her body was thrown 15 metres.
Bowman, who helped expand the Girls Gone Wild soft porn business in Australia, kept driving.
He agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of leaving the scene of a collision and Beverly Hills judge Elden Fox confirmed that on Friday at an emotional sentencing hearing, where Freeman's parents, brother and friends addressed the court.
Bowman also offered an apology to the family.
Under the terms of the deal, Bowman will also be placed on four years' probation after his release from jail.
Bowman was facing a lengthy prison sentence when sheriffs arrested him on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence after he surrendered to them the following day.
However, under the deal with the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, Bowman last week entered a guilty plea to the lesser charge of leaving the scene of a collision.
Getting away with murder is one of new new ways of the law.
You can kill someone, and then be 'sentenced' to a holiday resort (jail) for one year.
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