Former Waianae High School quarterback Puletua Wilson was convicted Thursday of manslaughter in the 2017 drunken driving crash near Keaau Beach Park that killed his 21-year-old friend and back-seat passenger Troy Kahooilihala.

The Circuit Court jury of 10 women and two men deliberated from midday Wednesday and reached a unanimous verdict early Thursday afternoon.

The now 29-year-old will face a maximum of 20 years in prison for the Class A felony when he is sentenced Nov. 15.

Honolulu Prosecutor Steve Alm said, “Due to the severity of the offense and the need to deter future conduct, we will be asking the Court to sentence Wilson to the maximum prison term.”

“The Department is very pleased with the verdict and hopes that it brings some measure of closure to Troy Kahooilihala’s family,” Alm said. “Drinking and driving is a deadly combination and Wilson’s reckless behavior resulted in the death of a young man with a bright future ahead of him.”

Wilson, then 24, was already intoxicated after a night of drinking at the Waianae Boat Harbor with friends Kahooilihala and Robbie Delenia, and continued to drink with other friends when they went to the Yokohama Bay cul-de-sac, Deputy Prosecutor Anna Ishikawa told jurors in closing arguments Wednesday.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 2017, Wilson jumped behind the wheel of Delenia’s maroon Toyota Avalon and drove off with Delenia in the front seat and Kahooilihala in the back.

He was driving more than 100 mph in a 45 mph zone toward Makaha, never slowing down, on Farrington Highway as he headed home, with no evidence of braking, police said.

The car went airborne after striking a parked pickup truck and flipped multiple times before landing 200 feet from the truck onto the beach at Keaau. Kahooilihala was ejected from the back seat another 60 feet, “cracking his head on boulders,” Ishikawa said, dying at the scene of multiple blunt force injuries to his body and bleeding on the brain.

After the verdict was read, Wilson, dressed in a blue-and-white aloha shirt, left the courtroom to join his waiting family in the hall. He remains free on $100,000 bond until sentencing.

While Judge Paul Wong debriefed the jurors, three deputy sheriffs waited for Wilson to leave the courthouse, then escorted jurors to the parking garage.

The Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office did not respond to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s inquiry as to why Wilson was not immediately incarcerated following the guilty verdict.

His lawyer, Nelson Goo, said he doesn’t know why the deputy prosecutor did not ask for him to be taken into custody, but said perhaps it was because Wilson had been out on bail for years and had been on good behavior.

During closing arguments Wednesday, Goo raised several issues and said the prosecution failed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on manslaughter, and suggested negligent homicide would be appropriate.

He suggested that perhaps Delenia was driving the car since Wilson was found in the middle of the front seat.

But Ishikawa said Wilson was found suspended upside down by his seat belt in the driver’s seat, which had shifted to the middle since the car had flipped over.

Despite friends trying to stop Wilson from driving, Goo suggested that the friends who followed Wilson were chasing him and that the “pursuit” may have contributed toward the crash.

Photos of the mangled wreckage of the sedan were shown to the jurors, as well as the lifeless body of Kaho­oilihala on the boulders.

The state was prevented from offering as evidence Wilson’s 0.17 blood alcohol level, more than twice the legal limit for driving, which had been taken at the hospital two hours after the crash at the direction of police officers.

The judge reversed his order denying a motion to suppress the evidence after Goo presented in November an October appeals court ruling on a similar case that ruled against a blood draw taken without a warrant.

Kahooilihala’s parents have filed a civil lawsuit against Wilson.