The illegal Guatemalan who killed three people in a crash in a Colorado Baskin-Robbins has been sentenced, and the result is disappointment for the victims’ families.
Francis Hernandez could have gotten 108 years hard time, but instead received only 60 years, despite the families’ pleas for the maximum.
The convicted man was an illegal alien who had been arrested 16 times in Colorado but was never deported, and possessed 12 aliases with two different birth dates.
He recklessly drove a Chevy Suburban at nearly 80 mph in a 40 zone when he smashed into a pickup, killing Debra Serecky, 51, and Patricia Guntharp, 49. The truck was propelled into the nearby Baskin-Robbins store where three-year-old Marten Kudlis (pictured) was struck and killed inside the store.
See also my earlier blog posts about this preventable crime on Vdare.com.
Driver in Aurora ice-cream-shop crash sentenced to 60 years, Denver Post, April 6, 2010
Serecky’s husband, William, asked the judge to hand down the harshest penalty possible.
“He has no regard for any life but his own,” William Serecky said.
In asking for leniency, public defender Chris Baumann, who sought a prison sentence of between four and 12 years, noted that Hernandez had never been convicted of a felony. Baumann would not comment after the sentencing, but he did say that he planned to appeal the conviction that came down in February.
Prosecutor Karen Pearson did not take questions by reporters but said the sentence “ensures that Francis Hernandez will not be out any time soon.”After the conviction, the Kudlis family filed a civil suit in Arapahoe County District Court, seeking damages from Hernandez and his family; the family of Guntharp, who was high on methamphetamine at the time of the crash; and several law enforcement agencies that arrested or cited Hernandez but did not report him to federal authorities for deportation.
Marat Kudlis said his wife, Enely, is pregnant with a girl who will never get to know the brother she should have had.
“He should have grown up to be an attorney or a doctor,” Kudlis said of his son. “I can’t kiss him anymore. I can’t play football with him.”
How stunning that the defense lawyer had the gall to request a four-year sentence after his client killed three people. Defense attorneys are something else.
Marat Kudlis had plenty to say about the case…
