Tears flowed Wednesday in a crowded courtroom as friends and relatives of car-crash victims sought justice for a man who was killed and a woman who was left in a coma.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne sentenced Andrew Wolfe, 35, of Seattle to five years in prison, just eight months shy of the maximum allowed under the law.
The courtroom was packed with people who knew Miguel Grimaldo Plasencia, who was killed in the crash, and Jessica Aldrete, who suffered severe brain injuries and who hasn’t regained consciousness and now is being cared for in a nursing home.
Wolfe pleaded guilty to one count each of vehicular homicide and vehicular assault. He had two previous felony convictions in California, meaning he will spend more time in prison than most people who are convicted of vehicular homicide.
Eleven people stood to address Wynne, most of them asking for the maximum penalty.
Seattle lawyer Allen Ressler spoke on behalf of Plasencia’s parents, who live in Mexico. He described the anguish the death caused in the family.
“This is the greatest pain a human being can experience,” Ressler said, reading from a letter sent by Plasencia’s parents.
Scott Blair, an attorney from Seattle, spoke on behalf of Aldrete, talking about her two children who now don’t have a parent, and the fact that she sheds tears and has more involuntary movements when her children visit her in the nursing home.
She’s imprisoned in a body that can’t adequately respond, what Blair called “a prison without walls,” because Wolfe made some bad choices.
Her family runs the Paraiso Mexican restaurant in Smokey Point, and Blair said the size of the gathering in the courtroom spoke for how much the two victims were loved.
The accident occurred on New Year’s Eve on Smokey Point Boulevard while Wolfe, a floor covering installer, was driving his employer’s van. The van plowed into the back of a Mercury Cougar. Grimaldo was a passenger in the right rear seat and Aldrete was sitting in the front right passenger seat.
Wolfe’s blood-alcohol level after the accident was more than twice the legal limit of .08 percent.
The Cougar’s driver, Francisco Grimaldo Plasencia, suffered less severe head injuries.
Wolfe’s defense attorney, public defender Marybeth Dingledy, said her client was remorseful and gave up fighting by pleading guilty early this month. She asked the judge to sentence him to a little more than four years, the low end of the sentencing range.
“He will live with it the rest of his life,” Dingledy told the judge.
Wolfe also spoke.
“There is nothing I can say to make it any better,” Wolfe told the judge. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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