22-year old cheerleader Nancy Lopez-Ruiz had just been hired by the Miami Heat for a dancing job. She was supposed to start performing publicly in October 2010. Before she had a chance to begin her dancing career, 46-year old Mario Careaga slammed into her with his 2009 Mercedes while she was sitting on her Suzuki sport motorcycle and putting on her helmet. She died at the scene of the accident after being struck by this car on September 10, 2010. The accident happened in Fort Lauderdale, where Sunrise Blvd. separates from Federal Highway, and drivers heading west sometimes don’t realize that they have to stay in the right lane to avoid finding themselves suddenly headed south. According to Fort Lauderdale Police, the force of the crash threw the 22-year-old Lopez-Ruiz more than 130 feet in the air! The accident was videotaped and the jurors had the opportunity to watch the videotape on March 18, 2014.
Mario Careaga, a Fort Lauderdale insurance executive, had blood alcohol levels of .24 percent and .23 percent that were measured in two samples after the crash, according to probable cause affidavit. This is three times the legal limit of 0.8! After a long discovery period, a jury was finally chosen for the trial of Mario Careaga more than three years later, on March 19, 2014.
There are several different machines on the market used for analyzing a DUI suspect’s blood alcohol level (BAC). The most current generation of breath analysis machines (still commonly referred to as “breathalyzers”), analyze the alcohol content of exhaled vapor through a method called infrared spectroscopic analysis. The latter method of analysis is based on the scientific principal that captured alcohol vapor absorbs light waves of a particular frequency in the presence of light, depending on the amount of alcohol present. A computer translates this data into the more familiar BAC measurement used to determine the level of alcohol in a person’s bloodstream.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vital Signs: Alcohol-Impaired Driving Among Adults – United States, 2010; available at http://www.cdc.gov, every two hours, three people are killed in alcohol-related highway crashes. The consequences of drinking and driving are arrests, property damage, injuries, and thousands of deaths each year. An estimated 4 million U.S. adults reported driving under the influence of alcohol at least once in 2010—yielding an estimated 112 million alcohol-impaired driving episodes. Men accounted for 81 percent of these incidents.1
DUI manslaughter is a second degree felony, for which the penalty is up to a $10,000 fine and/or 15 years in prison. Due to recent law enforcement trends that focus on preventing DUI by penalizing offenders harshly, most district attorney offices refuse to negotiate plea bargains in DUI manslaughter cases. Even if Careaga is sentenced to 15 years in prison, Nancy’s parents will never get their daughter back, but at least the end of the trial might bring them closure. At least they will know that justice has been served.
References
1U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vital Signs: Alcohol-Impaired Driving among Adults – United States, 2010; available at http://www.cdc.gov as of April 2012.