Thread: OR: Under Age Illegal DUI/Accident/Injury

Poster Note:
1. This story was buried in the printed paper in the back of the Obit section - very inconspicuously...
2. Sorry if this is a duplicate.


Short Link: http://tinyurl.com/2yo6ql

Original URL:
http://www.oregonlive.com/weblogs/print ... 26852.html


The Oregonian


Thursday, January 18, 2007

Happy Valley man admits causing two injury accidents
OREGON CITY – After pleading guilty today to charges of assault and driving under the influence of intoxicants, a 19-year-old Happy Valley man apologized for seriously injuring two women in separate collisions.

One of the women is brain-damaged and partly paralyzed.

"I am sorry," said Sergio Garcia Castro, speaking through an interpreter in Clackamas County Circuit Court. "I don't have the words to ask for forgiveness."

Castro was sentenced to 100 months in prison. Prosecutors said he had been living in the United States illegally and predicted that, after serving his sentence, he would be deported to Mexico.

On Nov. 19 Castro hit a woman at the intersection of Southeast Sunnyside Road and Southeast Stevens Road, continued driving and struck a car head-on near the Sunnyside overpass of Interstate 205 in Clackamas.

The pedestrian, Belen Torres Gonzalez, 24, of Southeast Causey Loop, was taken to OHSU Hospital in critical condition. She remains hospitalized and is receiving treatment for brain injuries, some paralysis and a pelvic fracture, prosecutors said, adding that she might need a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Susan Lorraine Baker, 53, of Northeast 138th Avenue in Portland, was driving the other car. She is using a wheelchair but said her doctors expect her to make a full recovery this year.

"Right now I'm kind of a prisoner in my own body and my own home," Baker said. "Am I angry? Do I hate? No, because I've been young before, and I've made mistakes. I just hope I can go back and two-step and line dance like I did before."


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Prosecutors said he had been living in the United States illegally and predicted that, after serving his sentence, he would be deported to Mexico.

May he never get behind the wheel of another car in the US.