1 month ago
16
FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - A antheral who has been convicted of 2 anterior DUIs was sentenced Monday for a head-on clang that ended up sidesplitting a 22-year-old from Mendota, the Fresno County District Attorney's Office said.
Gilberto Santiago-Castro, a 30-year-old from Mendota, was sentenced Monday pursuing his blameworthy plea connected May 21, 2025.
The DA's bureau said Santiago-Castro was antecedently convicted of 2 abstracted driving nether the power offences successful 2018 and 2021. Both convictions occurred successful June 2022.
On Oct. 3, 2022, astatine astir 3 a.m., Santiago-Castro was driving his Chevy Equinox southbound connected Highway 33, northbound of the metropolis of Mendota. The DA said astatine the aforesaid time, 22-year-old Benedo Alfaro-Vasquez of Mendota was driving his Toyota Corolla northbound.
The DA said that Santiago-Castro entered the northbound lanes, striking Alfaro-Vazquez's conveyance head-on and sidesplitting him.
Officers with the California Highway Patrol responded to the country and evaluated Santiago-Castro for DUI. The DA said CHP's probe revealed that helium had a humor intoxicant attraction of 0.14%, astir doubly the ineligible bounds for operating a vehicle.
A further probe determined that Santiago-Castro was traveling astatine astir 86 miles per hr astatine the clip of the impact. The researcher besides recovered footage from a privately owned, dash-mounted camera wrong his vehicle. The video showed him driving successful the opposing lane for astir a infinitesimal earlier the crash.
The DA's bureau said that arsenic a effect of Santiago-Castro's anterior convictions, helium received what is known arsenic the "Watson Advisement." He was warned by a justice that driving nether the power of intoxicant oregon drugs importantly impaired his quality to safely run a centrifugal vehicle, and that if helium continued to bash truthful and idiosyncratic was killed arsenic a result, helium could beryllium charged with murder.
Santiago-Castro was sentenced to 15 years to beingness successful situation for the transgression of second-degree murder.
