2 months ago
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VISALIA, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - A erstwhile Dinuba simple schoolhouse main has been sentenced to 23 years and 8 months successful prison, aft helium admitted to driving drunk successful a clang that killed a parent and girl adjacent Reedley successful 2023.
Blake Benham was the main astatine John F. Kennedy Elementary School successful Dinuba erstwhile helium drove his pickup motortruck head-on into the SUV of 55-year-old Gloria Barajas and her daughter, 35-year-old Brenda Quinonez, connected Dec. 3.
They some died successful the crash.
Friday, astir a year-and-a-half later, Tulare County Judge Jennifer Shirk work aloud Benham's destiny successful beforehand of a packed courtroom of household and friends from each side, a country of astir 80 people.
In May, Benham pleaded blameworthy to 2 counts of gross vehicular manslaughter portion intoxicated, and 1 number of driving with a .08 humor intoxicant contented oregon higher causing injury.
He had besides been charged with 2 counts of execution successful the lawsuit earlier they were dismissed.
Either way, he'll walk implicit 2 decades successful prison.
Still, household members and different subsister from that clang are near feeling empty; lone satisfied truthful overmuch with the justness served.
“I lone retrieve lasting betwixt some of their caskets, surrounded by my siblings and conscionable crying. That’s the representation that’s burned into my head," said Jennifer Quinonez, girl and sister of the victims. "We didn’t get a last goodbye. We didn’t get closure. All we person present is grief."
Jennifer, besides successful the car that day, survived the crash. She says it came conscionable aft the household finished Christmas shopping.
It took her astir a period successful the infirmary to retrieve physically, but mentally and emotionally, she says she and her household volition ever beryllium scarred.
"My parent and sister utilized to ever archer america that 1 anserine determination tin outgo idiosyncratic their family," she said to the court. "And it’s a tragic irony that specified contented came from radical who mislaid their lives due to the fact that of precisely that."
Benham, with tears moving down his look and sniffles heard passim the proceedings, besides spoke straight to the household of the victims.
“I privation you to know that I’m truthful atrocious for what I did. I privation to marque it wide that I instrumentality afloat responsibility," helium said.
“I didn’t merit to locomotion distant from the mishap live and I don’t cognize precisely wherefore I did," said Benham. "I cognize that I merit to spell to prison.”
The justice besides ordered Benham to wage $10,000 successful restitution to the victims’ family. He plans to enactment passim his clip down bars to bash so.
