The driver who hit and killed John Akers, a SunTran driver who was cycling to work, has been sentenced to 15 years in jail, the Arizona Daily Star is reporting.
According to court records, Enrique F. Hernandez plead guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter, leaving the scene of a crash that caused a death as well as driving under the influence.
The record indicates, Akers’ son was opposed to the reduced plea agreement.
Akers was killed on the morning on May 23, 2013 when Hernandez struck him near the intersection of Mission and Irvington Road.
Read the Star’s story for reaction from Akers’ family.
“His attorney, Walter Goncalez, said his client has no prior criminal history and had taken responsibility for the accident”. The ACCIDENT????? When can we start calling incidents like these crimes?
TucsonJanet I absolutely agree that this is not an accident. Hit and run is a deliberate choice, and it is a crime. I wish that our law enforcement organizations and media would begin to use value-neutral terms such as ‘crash,’ ‘collision,’ or ‘incident.’
This tragedy was an accident only in the most limited sense: no one really wanted this outcome to occur. But even given that overly-generous reading to the situation (he was already DUI), it stopped being an accident the moment that Mr. Hernandez fled the scene, committing at least one additional crime in addition to DUI.
I believe that we should stop calling traffic collisions ‘accidents’ because it appears as though people rarely crash into vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, and fixed objects without also breaking traffic laws or more significant laws. Reading media accounts of traffic collisions, there is nearly always some extra-legal factor: excessive speed, failure to yield, red-light running, DUI, and so forth.
[…] Jan 2014 tucsonvelo.com: “The driver who hit and killed John Akers, a SunTran driver who was cycling to work, has […]
Thank