WOODLAND — Prosecutors called Armando Arias Gonzalez Jr. a threat to public safety, and a Yolo County jury agreed, convicting him of second-degree murder Friday for his role in an epilepsy-related crash in Davis that killed an 85-year-old Vacaville woman.
Jurors also found the Woodland man guilty of gross vehicular manslaughter and perjury in connection with the Feb. 1, 2014, collision on East Covell Boulevard, but acquitted him of allegations that he knowingly fled from the crash scene.
Gonzalez, 41, showed no visible reaction to the verdict, which followed a week of trial testimony and just over two hours of jury deliberations Friday morning.
It was a different story in the courtroom audience, however, as Bob and Lucia Morales, the son and daughter-in-law of crash victim Ruth “Darlene” Morales, became visibly emotional upon hearing the guilty verdicts.
Across the aisle, Gonzalez’s wife began to wail.
Yolo Superior Court Judge Paul K. Richardson scheduled Gonzalez’s sentencing for May 8. He faces a state prison sentence of 19 years to life, according to Yolo County Deputy District Attorney Amanda Zambor, the case’s lead prosecutor.
Outside the courtroom, the Moraleses praised police, prosecutors and jurors for the outcome of the trial, which they said presented “insurmountable evidence” against Gonzalez.
“His total disregard for the safety of others cost my mother her life,” Bob Morales said. “He knew the triggers that can cause his seizures, and every one of those was in place that day. …We’re happy he’ll be off the road and cannot cause injury to others through his gross negligence.”
Gonzalez’s defense attorney, Clemente Jimenez, expressed disappointment in the verdict.
However, “I don’t want to second-guess the jury’s decision,” he said as he left the courtroom with Gonzalez’s family. “They did their job, we did ours. I’ll leave it at that.”
Jimenez had called Morales’ death “a tragic accident,” one that occurred despite his client’s efforts to control his epilepsy with medications. He also noted that both doctors and the Department of Motor Vehicles had cleared Gonzalez to drive.
But prosecutors said Gonzalez should have known he was a dangerous driver, given his history of four other seizure-related crashes that caused mostly property damage, but also left him with two broken legs and a head injury on one occasion.
The perjury convictions stemmed from allegations that Gonzalez falsified DMV forms, withholding or minimizing information about his epilepsy in order to maintain his driver’s license.
Zambor, who prosecuted the case along with Deputy District Attorney Kyle Hasapes, said she is aware of only one other California case in which a person’s medical condition has been the basis for a second-degree murder charge.
“(It) was not a question of if the defendant was going to kill someone, it was a matter of when he killed somebody,” Zambor said. “Darlene Morales just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when it finally occurred.”
Morales had been in Davis that day to visit her longtime husband, Rudy, who was placed in a local skilled-nursing facility with advanced dementia just three days before the crash. Darlene Morales had pledged to visit her husband every day, her family said.
She was leaving her daily visit that Saturday afternoon when Gonzalez, who experienced two minor seizures at his Swift Dodge workplace earlier that day, had a third episode while driving on East Covell Boulevard near Baywood Lane that caused his foot to bear down on the gas pedal and rear-end Morales’ car at about 80 mph.
The impact pushed Morales’ car off the roadway, where it struck both a metal pole and a tree with such force that it took emergency personnel 20 minutes to extricate her from the wreckage. She died a short time later of blunt-force and internal injuries.
Gonzalez’s vehicle then continued westbound to Pole Line Road, rear-ending another car occupied by a mother and her daughter. In arguing against the hit-and-run charges, Jimenez said his client was still in the throes of a seizure at the time and therefore did not have the presence of mind to stop and aid Morales.
Bob Morales said his father’s condition swiftly declined after Darlene Morales’ visits came to a sudden halt. Each day he would ask for her, until “one day he figured it out and just dropped his head.” He passed away about two months later.
“People think of (85) as being very old, but she could actually trot up a flight of stairs,” Morales said of his mother. “She was not ready to leave, by any means.”
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene