The man who killed a beloved Eagle Ridge gatekeeper while
driving drunk, leaving five children motherless, pleaded no contest
to vehicular manslaughter and driving while over the legal
blood-alcohol limit. He could receive up to six years in prison at
a January sentencing hearing.
The man who killed a beloved Eagle Ridge gatekeeper while driving drunk, leaving five children motherless, pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter and driving while over the legal blood-alcohol limit. He could receive up to six years in prison at a January sentencing hearing.
Lourdes Sanchez, 48, died Sept. 16 after Julian Navarro Murillo’s truck slammed into her car when he attempted to make an unsafe left turn onto Day Road from Santa Teresa Boulevard, directly into the path of Sanchez’s oncoming car. She was traveling southbound on Santa Teresa on her way to her job as a guard at Eagle Ridge from her home in Morgan Hill. The two vehicles collided head on.
Murillo’s blood-alcohol level measured 0.22, nearly three times the legal limit, according to a toxicology report. Sanchez was pronounced dead at the scene.
Sanchez’s daughters, Stefanie and Suzanna Gutierrez, sat quietly in the last row of a crowded courtroom to hear Murillo’s plea. Gutierrez, 29, attended several previous hearings with her siblings only to find out they would be continued.
“It’s about time,” she said under her breath when Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Shapero took the bench 11 a.m. Thursday. She and her sister had been waiting since 8:30 a.m.
Flanked by his defense attorney, Ruben Munoz, and a Spanish translator, Murillo, 25, bobbed his head and answered Shapero’s questions in a mixture of English and Spanish. With the help of the translator, he pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter and driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 or more. He further admitted to an enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury which will allow the court to sentence him to a maximum of six years in prison.
Both charges qualify as strikes under the California Three Strikes law. If convicted of another felony, Murillo could face 25 years to life in prison, Deputy District Attorney Patty Henley said. Since two of the strikes arose out of the same incident, however, it’s likely that only one would be used against him if he commits another felony offense, she said.
“She’s not coming back but he has to pay for what he did,” said Gutierrez, 29, Sanchez’s oldest daughter. “I want to know what he’s thinking. Is he mad? Is he sorry? Is he laughing?”
Aside from the few words he spoke in response to the judge’s questions, Murillo chatted with an adjacent inmate and his attorney before Shapero took the bench.
Gutierrez described a close family that has struggled, especially during the holidays, to cope with the loss of a sister, mother and daughter. With four siblings and eight aunts and uncles on her mother’s side, holidays were always lively affairs, Gutierrez said.
Sanchez had moved to Morgan Hill in July – just two months before she was killed – from Hollister, where she lived with all her children. Since her mother’s death, Gutierrez has fought to gain custody of her younger brothers from her father and won. The now live together in Watsonville, near extended family.
Sanchez extracted her children from a violent domestic situation and an “irresponsible father” when Gutierrez was a teen, she said. Sanchez’s boyfriend of nearly a decade is taking her death especially hard and takes fresh flowers to her grave every Sunday, Gutierrez said, though he did not attend the plea hearing.
A sentencing hearing will be held 9 a.m. Jan. 13 in Department 91 of the South County Courthouse in San Martin. However, Deputy District Attorney Patty Henley said the probation department will make a report and most likely set another date for the formal sentencing. Murillo is currently being held in police custody at the county jail in San Jose.
