E-mail Story
Print Friendly
Send E-mail
Reprint story
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Fatal DWI Nets 9 Years
By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
Journal Staff Writer
Beverly Chacon needed someone she could trust to take care of her son when she was sent to prison in Texas in the mid-1990s for stealing a car. She was lucky enough to find two people in Carmen Salas and Brenda Melton.
On Tuesday, Chacon, 41, was sentenced to nine years in prison for killing Melton in a head-on DWI crash last year. Prosecutors said Chacon's breath alcohol concentration was 0.19 percent.
Chacon was driving the wrong way on Ladera NW on the afternoon of March 4, 2009, when she smashed into a car carrying Salas and Melton. Melton, 37, died a day after the crash from her injuries. Chacon fled the scene but was arrested shortly afterward.
She pleaded guilty in January to charges of vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident.
Family members from both sides struggled to express their emotions about the bizarre situation to state District Judge Neil Candelaria before he imposed the sentence.
Salas said she and Melton, who had been together for 13 years, were on their way to the grocery store before heading over to Salas' brother's house for dinner when the crash occurred. Salas said she and Melton had just bought a home on the West Side five months earlier and that "things were going so well."
Prosecutors said Chacon had been in trouble with the law several times over the past few years, including another drunken driving accident that resulted in serious injury to a person in another car.
Chacon's children asked the judge for "compassion" in his sentencing.
"Over the past several years, Your Honor, my mom became my best friend," Crystal Chacon, Beverly Chacon's daughter, told Candelaria.
Beverly Chacon, who cried throughout the sentencing hearing, read a statement to the judge and Melton's and Salas' families.
"There could never be any words to say how deeply sorry I am. I can't take that day back nor can I bring Brenda back. But I will live with this burden the rest of my life," she said.
At the end of her statement she turned around, faced the victim's family and apologized.
Candelaria was not swayed.
"One would think that with your conviction in 1994 of great bodily injury by a vehicle, that being a DWI, that somehow would have shocked your conscience to change your life around at that point in time. But here we are once again for something even worse than that," Candelaria said. "I certainly don't understand how people don't get the message that we see in the media and throughout our state, 'Don't drink and drive.' Apparently you never got that message at all."
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
