----
Agustin Renteria is not the only one who experienced tragedy - but he is the most vulnerable - He was charged for hitting another car head-on. Now it is learned that the other person was intoxicated. As in the Houston case where a man in a pick up hit a Sheriff's Deputy who was intoxicated -- who is guilty? The accused man in Houston was let go. But what will happen to Agustin Renteria?
Nurse impaired when she died in wreck, report says
Austin American Statesman
July 16, 2008KAUFMAN, Texas — A nurse killed when a man's vehicle struck her pickup truck head-on as she rushed her son's injured friend to the hospital was intoxicated, autopsy results show.
June Nalls, 41, had methamphetamines and traces of marijuana in her system. Her blood-alcohol level was 0.08, marking the point at which a driver can be charged with driving while intoxicated, according to an autopsy report obtained by The Dallas Morning News.
Nalls had been driving her son's friend to the hospital after a neighbor shot the teenager that March night.
Her son, Devin Nalls, and his friend, Brandon Robinson, hopped a fence surrounding a neighbor's property to check on a noisy party nearby. As they walked by the front porch, 74-year-old neighbor W.C. Frosch fired one shot from inside his home. It struck 15-year-old Brandon under his left arm, authorities said.
Nalls, a pediatric nurse, chose not to call 911 and instead drove her son and his friend to the hospital.
"She certainly has a couple of substances that are biologically active in her system," said Dallas County medical examiner Jeffrey Barnard. "How it affected her decision-making, I don't know. But certainly they're playing a role in terms of affecting her one way or the other."
Her husband, Mark Nalls, said he remembers his wife drinking two or three beers the night she died. But he has no explanation for why methamphetamines and marijuana were found in her system. The autopsy also found Nalls had taken marijuana within a few weeks of her death, although that drug was not active, Barnard said.
Texas Department of Public Safety officials acknowledge June Nalls was under the influence when Agustin Renteria, 27, of Kaufman, struck her pickup after he drifted into the wrong lane just outside Kaufman. Renteria had been drinking before the collision, according to the Kaufman County Sheriff's Office.
June Nalls suffered massive trauma in the wreck and died instantly. Her son Devin and Brandon survived.
"It doesn't change a thing," said Sgt. Brandon Negri of the Department of Public Safety. "She was not doing anything wrong in terms of her driving."
Frosch, the neighbor, said he believes he would not have been charged if June Nalls had not died in the wreck minutes after the shooting. News of her autopsy results could change the perception about her death and the role he played, Frosch said.
He maintains that he shot because he believed the teens were about to break into his house.
Initially, authorities cited Texas' Castle Doctrine in declining to arrest him. The law gives property owners the right to use deadly force against another person in defending themselves if they reasonably believe the person is committing or is attempting to commit certain crimes.
But a grand jury indicted Frosch in May on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The felony is punishable by two to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Renteria, the man accused of causing the wreck, was being held without bond at the Kaufman County Jail and has an immigration detainer, according to the Kaufman County Sheriff's Office. Renteria faces three charges in the case: leaving the scene of an accident, aggravated assault with a motor vehicle and criminally negligent homicide, said his attorney, Mark Calabria.
"This is some additional information that may help us better understand the situation ... this may shed some light on the entire situation of what happened that night," Calabria told The Associated Press about the autopsy findings Tuesday.
for Statesman article click here
No comments:
Post a Comment