On Wednesday, prosecutors in Orange County charged a Los Angeles Police Department officer with hitting a 19-year-old pedestrian and leaving him to die in the street while he was off duty and reportedly drunk earlier this year.
Carlos Gonzalo Coronel, 40, of Buena Park is a sergeant in the LAPD. According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, he is charged with DUI causing death and hit-and-run endangering a life. He also faces an additional charge of causing serious bodily harm, which could lengthen his sentence.
The accident happened early on February 1 in Tustin, near Nisson Road and DelAmo Avenue.
By 3:40 a.m., Coronel was behind the wheel of a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck “after a night of drinking with his brother-in-law.”
A statement from the district attorney’s office says that he hit and killed 19-year-old Imanol Salvador Gonzalez of Tustin who was walking in the street.
“Coronel, who was on his way to his girlfriend’s home, is accused of not stopping his truck to see what he hit,” it said. “He didn’t call the police.” Later, two people on their way home from work that morning found Gonzalez’s body lying in the middle of Nisson Road. They called the police.
They say Coronel drove to his girlfriend’s house, “leaving the man to die in the street,” instead of stopping to help, even though his truck had major front-end damage.
Lawyers for the Colonel later said that his girlfriend drove him back to his home in Buena Park. He supposedly told her to stay away from the street where the young man had been hit.
“In the hours after Gonzalez was killed, Coronel is also accused of searching the Internet to see if there had been a fatal hit and run in Tustin,” it said. “Coronel is also accused of driving by the Tustin Police Department crime scene where officers were investigating Gonzalez’ death but not alerting officers to the fact that he had been in a collision at that same intersection.”
Colonel could spend up to 6 years and 8 months in state prison if found guilty as charged.
At the time of the accident, it was known that Coronel had been convicted of DUI in 2011.
California law says that a driver can be charged with murder if they are involved in another DUI that kills someone. The DA’s office did not seek murder or manslaughter charges, though.
Todd Spitzer, the DA for Orange County, said the Colonel should have known better.
“Our law enforcement officers are entrusted with the highest level of public trust, and it is unconscionable thatan officer who swore an oath to protect and serve would leave a man to die in the street after hitting him whiledriving under the influence of alcohol,” he added.
“Imanol was loved by his family, and he did not deserve to have his story end lying in the middle of a dark Tustin street alone while the police officer who hit him drove away because his self-preservation was more important than a human life,” Spitzer said.
In Orange County Superior Court on June 27, there was going to be an arraignment hearing. Records show that Colonel was not in the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s custody at that time.
