John Jefferson
Left: A car wrecked in a crash in Sonoma County (Santa Rosa Police Department). Right: Jessica Muñoz (GoFundMe).
A Northern California mother died over the weekend — the victim of a multiple car crash that was caused by a drunk driver with a lengthy history of driving while intoxicated, Golden State police say.
Jessica Avila Muñoz, 31, was killed on Friday afternoon. A single mom, she leaves behind her 13-year-old daughter and a grief-stricken community of friends and colleagues in Sonoma County where she worked as a youth counselor at a juvenile correctional facility.
Nhan Van Nguyen, 68, stands accused of gross vehicular manslaughter and felony DUI causing great bodily injury, according to a press release issued by the Santa Rosa Police Department.
At the time of the incident, Muñoz was on the way to pick her daughter up from school, police say. At around 1:30 p.m., her Honda sedan was struck and crushed between two other vehicles — a Dodge truck and a Toyota Prius — in a wreck that occurred along a major thoroughfare in Santa Rosa, a large city in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Based on witness statements and local video surveillance, it appeared that the driver of the Honda was making a left turn from Lombardi Court to eastbound Sebastopol Road,” police wrote. “The Dodge pickup was traveling westbound on Sebastopol Road and appeared to run the red light and collided with the Honda in the intersection. The Prius had been stopped eastbound on Sebastopol Road and was struck by the Honda after the initial collision.”
Muñoz was removed from the vehicle, unconscious, by firefighters and rushed to a nearby hospital where she later succumbed to her injuries.
Nguyen was also quickly hospitalized because he appeared to have possibly suffered some injuries in the crash as well, police said, but he was eventually released entirely unscathed, and then subsequently transported to jail where he was booked and charged.
The driver of the Prius was also not injured and remained on the scene, police added.
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Crash scene investigators allege the pickup truck driver “displayed signs of alcohol impairment at the time of the collision.” Nguyen was driving with a suspended license at the time of the crash, police said.
Later, law enforcement said they confirmed Nguyen was, in fact, drunk when he crashed into Muñoz’s car. Police did not reveal his blood alcohol content (BAC) on that fatal and fateful day.
Earlier days and incidents, however, suggest driving drunk was not at all out of the ordinary for the pickup truck driver.
In the past, Nguyen had been arrested on four separate occasions for DUI charges, according to the police department.
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Muñoz was remembered fondly in two separate online fundraisers aimed toward helping her family with funeral and other costs.
“Jessica was a loving mother, sister, daughter and friend,” a GoFundMe by Joselin Lopez reads. “She was kind, funny, motivated, and achieved anything she set her mind to. She just started her career in the hopes of bringing a better life to her daughter. She was taken from us too soon.”
A second fundraiser was started by the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Association. Muñoz’s peers eulogized her at length:
Jessica was a dedicated and caring single mother, who was known as full of life. She was proud to serve as a peace officer for the Sonoma County Probation Department in Juvenile Hall and excited to begin her career in Criminal Justice.
Jessica was born and raised in Sonoma County, attended Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University, where she earned a degree in Psychology and Administration of Justice. She became a first-generation college graduate in her family.
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Nguyen is currently being detained in the Sonoma County Jail with no bail, records show.
The defendant is next slated to appear in court on Aug. 20.
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