Trial begins for San Clemente woman charged with drunken crash that killed 3 Las Vegas teens

Trial began Wednesday for a San Clemente woman who drunkenly crashed into a vehicle stopped at a Huntington Beach intersection, killing three Las Vegas teenagers.

Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney in their opening statements in a Santa Ana courtroom acknowledged that Bani Marcela Duarte, 29, was responsible for the 2018 crash that killed Brooke Hawley, 17, Albert Rossi, 17, and Dylan Mack, 18.

The question for jurors will be whether her culpability rises to the level of second-degree murder.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Dan Feldman told Orange County Superior Court jurors that Duarte had consumed an “unfathomable amount of alcohol” by the time she left a Newport Beach bar and mistakenly turned onto northbound Pacific Coast Highway while intending to head home to San Clemente.

While making an overly wide turn onto PCH, Duarte hit a curb, drawing notice from three young men in a nearby vehicle, the prosecutor said. After checking on possible damage to her car, Duarte got back into her Hyundai Sonata and drove off, while the young men, concerned that she was too drunk to drive, called 911 and followed her, Feldman said.

“They described her appearance as beyond intoxicated,” Feldman said. “Slurring, burping, staggering.”

As she approached a red light at PCH and Magnolia Street, Duarte sped up, crashing into the back of a stopped Toyota Corolla at nearly 80 mph. The prosecutor said she apparently was so confused she went faster to catch a light, even though it was already red.

In a recorded 911 call played for the jury, one of the men in the car following Duarte exclaimed, “She just hit a car! She just hit a car! One of the cars is on fire!”

Three of the teens in the Corolla were killed in the fiery collision, while a fourth was seriously injured.

Duarte suffered only a red mark from a seat belt, the prosecutor said.

Body-worn camera footage taken shortly after the collision captured Duarte, still sitting in her car, asking an officer, “Did somebody just die? What happened? What is going on?”

She later told the police that she had meant to take an Uber, and that driving “was just a stupid decision,” the prosecutor said.

“She rolled the dice and gambled with the lives of four young people and three of them died,” Feldman told jurors.

Duarte had previously been arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in 2016 and had lost her license for a year. The deputy involved in that arrest testified that Duarte unsuccessfully pleaded with him not to take her into custody, saying she had four kids at home and it would “mess up her life.”

Duarte’s attorney, Justin Glenn, acknowledged that Duarte drank an “excessive amount” the night of the fatal crash and broke the law.

“She killed them, the defense concedes that happening,” Glenn said. “The defense concedes she was under the influence.”

But Glenn said that despite Duarte’s earlier DUI arrest, she had never been given a formal warning, known as a Watson advisement, that if she again drank and drove and killed someone she could be charged with murder. Such warnings are often cited by prosecutors in cases where repeat DUI drivers are charged with second-degree murder rather than a lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter.

As a result, the defense attorney said the prosecution “cannot prove every element of a murder,” and he was going to ask jurors to “make a very difficult decision” in finding Duarte not guilty of second-degree murder.

Along with the three counts of second-degree murder, Duarte is also facing a felony count of driving under the influence of alcohol with an enhancement for causing great bodily injury.

At the time of Duarte’s arrest, several weeks after the crash, police alleged that they had reason to believe she had intended to flee the country. Police did not comment on what specifically made them believe she would flee, and that allegation was not raised during the opening statements of her trial.