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SANTA ANA — A 40-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison Friday for murdering two children and injuring four others and a teacher’s aide by intentionally driving his car onto a preschool playground last year. 

Superior Court Judge John Ryan imposed two life sentences without possibility of parole on Steven Allen Abrams, whose sanity was an issue during the trial. 

Abrams’ mental problems were a mitigating factor, but he planned the crime and did it deliberately, the judge said in imposing the punishment recommended by the jury. 

“Because the intent was to harm as many children as possible, it went beyond what actually happened,” Ryan said. 

“As I was thinking about the case, I asked myself rhetorically about the psychological harm that the other children and the other workers suffered,” he said. “The impact this case had on so many lives just makes it terribly aggravated.” 

Brandon Wiener, 3, and Sierra Soto, 4, were killed when Abrams, a ticket broker employee, drove his Cadillac through a chain-link fence and onto the grounds of Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center in Costa Mesa on May 3, 1999. 

“The holidays are here and I don’t have my baby to celebrate with,” Brandon’s mother, Pamela, tearfully told the court through sobs. She had just gone inside the school to get her son’s lunch box when the car rolled over him. 

Eric Soto told the judge that Sierra’s killer should be put to death. 

“Life without parole will not make me feel any better because it won’t bring my daughter back,” Soto said. 

A jury convicted Abrams in August on two counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder and two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter. The latter counts involved a couple whose car he tried to ram before smashing through the school fence. 

The prosecution contended that the attack on the children was a form of revenge for Abrams’ 1994 conviction on a charge of stalking a former girlfriend who lived in the area. 

“I was executing them ... as many as I could get,” Abrams said in a taped confession which jurors heard during the trial. “I was aiming for as many children as I could kill.” 

The defense claimed Abrams was legally insane, a paranoid schizophrenic who was trying to stop “brain-wave makers” from controlling his thoughts and behavior and who began hearing voices shortly after his stalking conviction. 

The prosecutor contended that Abrams’ mental problems were due to drug abuse. 

The jury decided in October that he was sane at the time of the crimes. 

Prosecutors then sought the death penalty but the jury voted in November to recommend that he spend the rest of his life in prison. 

The judge also sentenced Abrams to a concurrent term of 25 years and four months, and ordered him to pay $12,000 in restitution for the children’s funerals. 

The school shut down this year.