Photo: Miriam Aidee Vela Estrada
May 31, 2022 – Santa Barbara County, Ca.
The implied contract agreed to by those driving a motor vehicle on public thoroughfares demands both sobriety and taking responsibility for the safe and lawful operation of that vehicle. Supporting that mutual understanding are numerous laws and legislatively prescribed penalties imposed upon those who violate them.
Knowing what penalties she would likely be facing when she drove her car at what Lompoc Police Department spokesman Lt. Chip Arias described as “a fast speed through an alley,” and then careened into 50-year-old Lompoc resident Shirley Cavazos Juarez, 26-year-old Miriam Aidee Vela Estrada immediately fled the scene.
Juarez, suffering major injuries, was transported to Lompoc Valley Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
While the events leading up to the fatal crash remain “under investigation,” witness reports indicate that Estrada’s vehicle was driven at a “reckless high rate of speed as it struck a gas meter and a fence before hitting the woman.”
Estrada, herself a resident of Lompoc, was arrested and transported to Lompoc Jail, where she was charged with felony DUI causing great bodily injury, gross vehicular manslaughter, and felony hit and run.
Photo: Courtesy Facebook.com
