Attorney
Last month, a federal judge in Alexandria sentenced a 23-year-old woman to two years in prison for a drunk driving accident that killed one person and severely injured another in 2009. Last November, the woman pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and maiming while driving intoxicated. Her passenger died in the accident, while her other passenger (a soccer player for D.C. United) suffered serious injuries.
In October 2009, the driver and her two passengers left a D.C. nightclub early in the morning. They got into the woman’s 2004 Infiniti FX35 and drove south on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. The driver took her eyes off the road to glance at the car’s GPS unit, and the vehicle hit a guardrail, split in half and the back end fell down a 17-foot embankment. The woman’s blood alcohol content was nearly twice the legal limit at the time of the accident.
One passenger died at the scene. The soccer player suffered a broken fibula, tibia and femur of his right leg, a lacerated bladder, fractured left elbow, facial injuries and severe head trauma. He endured several surgeries and months of rehabilitation, and he has recently returned to playing soccer for D.C. United.
The woman could have received a three to four year sentence under current sentencing guidelines. The victim’s mother was in court to ask the judge to impose the maximum sentence for the driver’s “drunken, gross negligence.”
Drunk drivers and distracted drivers injure people on the road every day. A Northern Virginia personal injury lawyer can help you or a loved one recover compensation for injuries caused by careless drivers. Thomas McWeeny is a Virginia personal injury attorney at Koonz, McKenney, Johnson & DePaolis and he can help you with your claim.