Last week our Texas injury lawyers reported a tragic drunken driving wreck on I-10 where Christopher Lamar, 25, driving while intoxicated, struck a car and killed Jessica Rodriguez, 28, and her daughter, Kaylee Flores, 10.
Ms. Rodriguez and her daughter had the misfortune to be in the way of a repeat DWI offender at the wrong time. Ms. Rodriguez and her daughter had been in side the car at the side of I-10 while Ms. Rodriguez’s fiancée was outside of the vehicle to change a flat. WOAI reports that funeral arrangements have been made for the mother and her child.
WOAI reports that Christopher Lamar had already been convicted of two previous DWI offenses at the time that his drunken driving killed Ms. Rodriguez and her daughter. So the District Attorney for the area, Susan Reed, says that Texas law now makes him eligible to be charged with felony murder rather than the intoxicated manslaughter charge first-time offenders might face in a similar situation.
An intoxicated manslaughter conviction could put Lamar behind bars for only 2 to 20 years. But a felony murder conviction could put him behind bars for life. Since Lamar shows an evident tendency to continue to drink, drive, and endanger others on the road, our Texas injury lawyers feel that keeping Lamar off our Texas roads permanently through a felony murder conviction would be a win for public safety and for justice.
A cogent comment to the WOAI new story mentions that the SAPD might have been trying to obtain the authority to conduct stops at sobriety checkpoints that could go a long way towards mitigating the damage that drunken drivers are able to inflict on innocent Texas motorists and pedestrians. But it also mentions that politicians, under pressure from various interest groups, might have been reluctant to take further steps in the direction of crime enforcement.
Our Texas injury lawyers tend to barely glance at most comments posted on news sites, which consist of little more than pointless and hateful ranting. But occasionally we notice cogent and informative commentary sparkling like a little gem in the mud.