Albuquerque man sentenced to 30 days in jail in fatal 2020 crash

The mother of a woman who was struck and killed in an Albuquerque traffic median in 2020 told a judge Friday that she wanted the man responsible to receive a light sentence for the sake of his three children.

Juan Murillo was sentenced Friday to 30 days in the Metropolitan Detention Center in the death of 33-year-old Rachanda Myers, who was sitting in the median when she was fatally struck by Murillo’s vehicle at Pan American and Montgomery NE.

Murillo, 29, pleaded guilty in April to vehicular homicide (reckless driving) in Myers’ death, which happened at about 6 a.m. on Sept. 15, 2020.

Myers’ mother, Carol Myers, told a judge at his sentencing hearing Friday that she was relieved that Murillo, a father of three, would serve only 30 days in jail for her daughter’s death.

“I want him to be with his kids,” Carol Myers told 2nd Judicial District Judge Lucy Solimon. “I’m glad the sentence he is getting is light and he can be with his kids.”

After the hearing, Myers said her daughter and a boyfriend had walked a long distance that night and sat in the median to rest when she was fatally struck. Myers also said her daughter had plans to return to her family’s home in Socorro at the time she was killed.

Prosecutor Guinevere Ice said Murillo was driving on a frontage road “at a high rate of speed” and failed to notice that a line of vehicles had stopped ahead of him.

Murillo pleaded no contest to driving without a license and received a deferred sentence in 2019, court records show. A second charge of driving without insurance was dismissed that year.

Murillo’s attorney, Rusch Gathings, said that Murillo himself reported the crash to 911 and remained at the scene, where he cooperated with police. Gathings played the 911 recording of a distraught Murillo reporting the crash to a dispatcher.

At the hearing, Murillo read a letter that he sent to the Myers family after the crash in which he expressed remorse for the woman’s death.