Maryland Car Accident Attorney Blog
If you handle automobile accident cases such as those that occur every week here in Maryland, it doesn’t take long before one sees a drunk driving-related injury accident. And while serious traffic collisions are not uncommon, fatal car, truck and motorcycle wrecks happen frequently in and around Baltimore, Rockville, Gaithersburg and Washington, D.C.
As Maryland personal injury attorneys and car accident lawyers, I and my staff represent individuals and families who have been adversely affected by the negligence of other drivers. Whether through inattention, carelessness or malicious motivation, innocent victims of highway or urban automobile and commercial trucking crashes can be permanently disabled or killed as a result of a traffic wreck.
As mentioned in these pages on numerous occasions, the human toll from car and truck accidents can range between mild and severe, sometimes even fatal. Not only can passengers receive painful injuries such as broken bones, compound fractures, deep lacerations and dislocated joints, internal injuries as well as closed-head and spinal cord injuries can result from medium to high-speed collisions.
Trucking-related crashes can be some of the more intense wrecks and cause serious and sometimes fatal injuries to the driver and other occupants riding in a smaller passenger car that is hit by a big rig or commercial delivery vehicle. Of course, even collisions between smaller passenger cars can have serious repercussions for the occupants of sedans, minivan and sport utility vehicles (SUVs).
In particular, drunken driving accounts for a significant percentage of traffic fatalities here in Maryland and across the nation. State and local law enforcement agencies are constantly watching for intoxicated drivers, however many of these inconsiderate drivers go months or years without being involved in a serious car, truck or pedestrian accident. However, when a collision does occur, the results can be catastrophic for the occupants of either vehicle.
According to a news article a little while back, a negligent act by one woman irreversibly changed the lives of a family. Based on reports, a Prince George’s County woman was found by a Maryland court to have been drunk when her vehicle hit and killed two people standing on the roadside next to their vehicles back in February 2010.
Police reports show that the deadly crash occurred around 11pm along a stretch of Riggs Rd, following a an earlier minor accident. Justo Rosario and Roy Lacayo were reportedly sharing insurance information when they were both struck and killed by a vehicle being driven by Beltsville, MD, resident Jenny Mate.
The force of the impact speed was such, according to reports, that Rosario was caught beneath Mate’s vehicle and dragged under nearly 100 feet; she was apparently pronounced dead at the scene by emergency responders. Lacayo also pronounced dead at the crash site, died in plain sight of his teenage brother who was reportedly sitting in one of the two stationary vehicles at the time of the collision.
According to court records, prior to the fatal 2010 accident, Mate had a number of what news articles described through a long list of run-ins with the police. Ironically, at the time of the collision, the woman was driving on a suspended license, having been convicted a second time for drunken driving in Montgomery County; she was reportedly awaiting sentencing when the wreck occurred.
Although the court sentenced Mate to a maximum of 20 years in prison for the crash, it is not likely that Mate will serve the entire sentence.
Woman Sentenced to 20 Years in DWI Deaths of Justo Rosario and Roy Lacayo, MyFoxDC.com, July 12, 2011