Man gets 16 years in fatal DUI wreck case
| Wednesday, Nov 11 2009 04:41 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Nov 11 2009 04:41 PM
A Bakersfield man with three drunken driving convictions has been sentenced to 16 years to life in prison for the traffic death of a woman in 2008.
That crash was the second time Tommy Vincente Valenzuela, 35, killed someone on the road. He got two years in prison for the death of an Arvin man in 2004. Investigators tried to find out if Valenzuela was drunk in that crash but were unable to find proof.
In the latest crash that killed 45-year-old Lila Aranda of Bakersfield on Feb. 14, 2008, Valenzuela was initially charged with second-degree murder. But the murder charge was reduced in August to gross vehicular manslaughter while driving drunk with prior drunken driving convictions.
The sentence is the same for both charges -- 15 years to life -- but Valenzuela will be eligible for parole three years sooner with the reduced charge. Under the murder charge he could not have been paroled until he served 15 years in prison, but now he can be paroled after 12 years, a prosecutor said.
The charge was reduced because it would have been difficult to prove that Valenzuela had been adequately warned in his prior drunken driving cases that he could have been charged with murder if he drove drunk again and killed someone, Deputy District Attorney Richard Jackson said.
That kind of warning was only put into place after Valenzuela's drunken driving convictions in 2003, 2001 and 1999.
The California Highway Patrol investigated whether Valenzuela was drunk in a 2004 hit-and-run crash that killed 26-year-old Jorge Pruneda Benavides, 26, on the shoulder of Highway 58 near Union Avenue. But that could not be determined and Valenzuela pleaded no contest to felony hit and run for a two-year prison term.
Benavides was changing a tire on the side of the road at 2:20 a.m. when he was struck by Valenzuela's pickup truck, the CHP reported.
In the latest crash death, Valenzuela failed to stop at a stop sign on Casa Loma Drive at Madison Street where he lost control of his vehicle and struck a car that Aranda was a passenger in.
Three other people in the car with Aranda were also injured.
Valenzuela tried to run away from the scene, but he was detained by people until a Bakersfield police cruiser was flagged down, the CHP reported. He pleaded no contest to being drunk in that crash, court records say.
He was sentenced last week.
