By guest-writer
A 20-year-old Florida resident was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing two men in a felony DUI accident on New Year’s Day 2010, according to a report from the Orlando Sentinel.
Earlier this year, Nieves pled guilty to two counts of DUI manslaughter and had waited several weeks for the judge to make a determination about the length of her sentence.
Sources indicate that, at the time of the accident, Toni Nieves was already on probation for a previous drunk driving incident when she struck and killed 18-year-old Bradley Summersill and his 22-year-old friend, Brian Walker.
Summersill and Walker had been driving to a nearby town to pick up a friend’s mother when their car was struck by Nieves’ vehicle.
The sentencing was fraught with emotion, as the mothers of the two men held up pictures of their dead sons while Nieves refused to lift her eyes to look at the pictures.
Summersill’s mother made an emotional appeal to Nieves, telling her that she “should have never been on the road that night,” as she fought back tears.
In response to the emotions displayed by the families of the victims, Nieves’ stepfather, Frank Petrillo, later offered an apology on her behalf, saying there was a “lot of anguish here and a lot of feeling” and noting that he and his family were deeply sorry for the tragic result of the accident.
At the time of the fatal DUI accident, Nieves was already serving probation for a previous DUI, and sources say that the terms of her probation prohibited her from driving, much less driving while under the influence of alcohol.
Sources say that Nieves’ blood alcohol content was measured at 0.189 percent, which is significantly higher than the legal limit of .08. She claims that she saw the other vehicle’s taillights and, instead of hitting her brakes, accidentally hit the gas pedal.
During the court proceedings, Nieves’ family claimed that Summersill, the driver of the other car, should share a portion of the blame because he allegedly pulled in front of Nieves’ car and reportedly had a blood alcohol level of 0.10 percent after the accident.
The judge may have taken this mitigating factor into consideration when sentencing Nieves, because the young driver faced a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.
Instead, Nieves will serve a decade in prison, which will be followed by five years of court-supervised probation. In addition, Nieves will eventually have to pay $20,000 in restitution to the families of the two sons for the cost of their funerals.
