An Orange County driver who pleaded responsible to fatally hitting a pregnant lady whereas driving below the affect of a cocktail of medication in 2020 was sentenced on Friday to fifteen years to life in jail.
The Orange County district legal professional’s workplace mentioned Courtney Fritz Pandolfi, 44, already had a number of DUI convictions when she received behind the wheel on Aug. 11, 2020, whereas excessive on a mixture of medication, together with cocaine and methamphetamine, and fatally hit 23-year-old Yesenia Aguilar.
Aguilar was eight months pregnant and out strolling along with her husband in Anaheim when Pandolfi jumped the curb along with her Jeep SUV, crashing right into a metallic newspaper stand earlier than barreling towards the couple and hitting Aguilar.
Prosecutors mentioned Pandolfi continued driving an extra 347 ft with out braking earlier than her Jeep turned disabled.
The child, Adalyn Rose, was delivered alive in an emergency C-section.
“An exquisite little woman got here into the world preventing like hell to outlive the tragedy that took her personal mom’s life, and the power that little woman has proven gave her personal father the desire to dwell,” Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer mentioned in a press release.
“Adalyn Rose’s first breath will likely be eternally inextricably intertwined along with her mom’s final breath,” Spitzer continued, “however that little woman will develop up understanding that her mom’s final act on earth was to do no matter she might to guard her unborn child.”
Pandolfi, of Backyard Grove, pleaded responsible in February to homicide and a wide range of different costs, together with felony driving below the affect of medication inflicting bodily damage and two misdemeanors for driving with a suspended license. A number of the counts stemmed from Pandolfi driving below the affect of medication in November 2019.
Pandolfi had additionally been convicted of DUIs in 2008, 2015 and 2016, prosecutors mentioned, and acquired formal authorized warnings every time that she might be charged with homicide if she went on to kill somebody whereas driving below the affect.
“My shopper completed right this moment what she wished to do, which was to spare the household the extra grief and heartache of a trial,” Pandolfi’s legal professional, Fred Fascenelli, mentioned when she pleaded responsible in February. “She acknowledges it was a tragic state of affairs of her making.”
Aguilar’s widower, James Alvarez, posted a video on social media of himself leaving the courtroom together with his daughter, now 3, after the sentencing. He wrote that after “the hardest 3 years that [he’d] needed to endure,” it was “lastly over.”
“I can lastly shut this chapter of my life,” Alvarez wrote on Instagram. “My late spouse’s killer lastly acquired the utmost sentence. Despite the fact that 15 years to life isn’t sufficient, I can lastly breathe after preventing for thus lengthy to get the justice that we deserve. … and [I] will proceed to struggle to ensure she by no means will get out.”
He continued: “I used to be given a second likelihood in life as a result of I might have died too … so I’m going to make use of this second alternative to do good on this world. I’m going [to be] the voice and power of each person who misplaced a cherished one from one other individual’s egocentric acts.”
