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DC Area Woman Gets 2 Years

by | Mar 21, 2011

According to a recent Washington Post article, Maria Alejandra Espinoza was sentenced to two years in jail after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter and driving while intoxicated (DWI) charges. Espinoza was driving her car in the Washington, DC Metro area with passengers Ashley Roberta and Charlie Davies, a player for the DC United major league soccer team. Testimony in court reflects that the three occupants of the defendant’s Infiniti FX35 were headed to Davies’ hotel in Crystal City.

Espinoza was using a GPS to find the hotel but missed a turn.  While the GPS was recalculating, she look away from the road and at the screen. Her car ran off the road, collided with a guardrail and was cut in half. The guardrail was there to protect cars from running off an embankment. The back half of the car was said to have fallen nearly twenty feet before hitting the ground.  Roberta died in the wreck, and Davies suffered severe injuries. Police reported that Espinoza’s blood alcohol content (BAC) was almost twice the legal limit of 0.08 grams per milliliter of blood.

As a Washington, DC DUI lawyer, one of the most serious types of cases that come into your office involves injuries or death related to drunk driving. In Washington, DC, driving while intoxicated charges involving a death can be considered a type of involuntary manslaughter. The DC Code also allows for a DUI that results in personal injury to be charged as an aggravated assault if the driver acted with an extreme indifference to human life.