WOODLAND — A Yolo County jury will spend the next several weeks hearing evidence in the case of a Woodland man accused of causing a fatal hit-and-run collision in Davis while in the midst of a seizure.
The question they’re expected to answer is this: Was the Feb. 1, 2014, crash on East Covell Boulevard that killed 85-year-old Ruth “Darlene” Morales of Vacaville a tragic and unexpected accident, or the foreseeable result of the defendant’s decision to drive that day?
Prosecutors say it was the latter, given Armando Arias Gonzalez Jr.’s 30-year history of epileptic seizures that caused four other wrecks in the past, as well as his tendency to suffer stress-related “breakthrough” seizures despite his efforts to control his condition with medication.
Combined, it amounts to implied malice, claim prosecutors, who have charged Gonzalez with second-degree murder in addition to vehicular manslaughter and hit -and-run causing death or serious bodily injury.
“We trust that the people on the road with us are safe to drive, and we trust that they know they’re physically capable to drive,” Deputy District Attorney Kyle Hasapes told the seven-woman, five-man jury during opening statements Thursday in Yolo Superior Court. Gonzalez “broke that trust … and (Morales) paid for that with her life.”
Gonzalez, 40, has pleaded not guilty to charges.
His attorney, Clemente Jimenez, acknowledged his client’s longtime battle with epilepsy but said he’s managed to adapt to it, taking his medication “religiously” and seeing a neurologist on a regular basis.
That doctor will testify that Gonzalez “posed no more risk than the average driver,” Jimenez said in his brief opening remarks, also noting that the Department of Motor Vehicles gave him the all-clear to be on the road.
“There was no way for him to know he was going to have a seizure — that’s what the evidence will show,” Jimenez said. He added that Gonzalez fled the crash scene not deliberately but rather “in the throes of a seizure.”
Morales, who turned 85 the day before she died, had been in Davis to visit her husband Rudy, who was in the advanced stages of dementia at the Courtyard Healthcare Center in East Davis. Morales had placed him there three days earlier after years of caring for him at home.
“Not a day will go by that I do not come and visit you in this home,” Morales told her husband, according to Hasapes.
At about the same time Morales left the East Eighth Street facility that Saturday afternoon, Gonzalez was leaving his Swift Dodge workplace in South Davis, complaining of pain to his head and stomach, according to testimony given at his preliminary hearing last July.
Both were traveling westbound on East Covell Boulevard near Baywood Lane when Gonzalez suffered a seizure that caused his foot to bear down on the gas pedal, sending it traveling anywhere from 72 to 81 mph as it rear-ended Morales’ car, Hasapes said.
The car veered to the right toward a metal pole, hitting it “with such force and such violence … that it spun that metal pole out of the grooves in the ground,” Hasapes told the jury. Morales’ vehicle then rotated 180 degrees before the driver’s side struck a tree, trapping her inside with a fractured pelvis and crushing injuries to her legs, among other wounds.
She died a short time later at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
Authorities said Gonzalez’s car continued westbound following the fatal collision, rear-ending a second vehicle occupied by a woman and her 12-year-old daughter at Pole Line Road. Both sustained minor injuries.
Expected to last about three weeks, Gonzalez’s trial will include testimony from dozens of witnesses including first responders, police investigators, medical experts and DMV representatives.
In addition to the charges related to the crash, Gonzalez also faces two counts of perjury. Prosecutors say he repeatedly lied on DMV forms in order to retain his license, either failing to acknowledge his epilepsy or misrepresenting the number of seizures he had recently suffered. Gonzalez has denied those allegations as well.
Testimony continues today in Judge Paul Richardson’s courtroom.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene