Hours after taking a class on the dangers of drinking and driving, a 29-year-old man barreled into a Cypress intersection against the light at twice the legal limit for alcohol and caused a multi-vehicle crash that killed his girlfriend, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday while the defendant’s attorney said the collision was a “tragic accident.”
Nicolas Linley Sanchez-McCormick is charged with second-degree murder, driving under the influence of alcohol causing injury and driving under the influence with a blood-alcohol level of .08% or more causing injury, all felonies. He also faces a sentencing enhancement for committing an offense while out on bail for vandalism.
Sanchez-McCormick is accused of killing his 22-year-old girlfriend, Alexis Barragan of La Mirada, on Easter, April 16, 2017.
Sanchez-McCormick is facing an upgraded charge of murder instead of voluntary manslaughter because he had a prior case of driving under the influence in which he received advisements on the dangers of drinking and driving.
“This is a case of every parents’ worst nightmare and for one family on Easter that nightmare became a reality,” said Deputy District Attorney Devin Campbell. “What’s worse is her boyfriend at the time — the defendant — was the one behind the wheel. What’s worst yet, the defendant was more than twice the legal limit. What’s even worse is this didn’t have to happen. This wasn’t the defendant’s first run-in with the law or first experience with alcohol or speeding or running a red light and driving under the influence.”
Barragan was the passenger in the 2005 Chevy Malibu Classic the defendant was driving the night of the collision, Campbell said.
Sanchez-McCormick had been arrested for drinking and driving in Los Angeles County in the “wee hours” of New Year’s Day and had to take DUI classes as a result, Campbell said.
On April 15, 2017, he finished up a class in Whittier near his home late in the morning and picked up his girlfriend to go to Huntington Beach where “the defendant chose to drink — a lot,” Campbell said.
The two were driving home when they got into the crash at Katella Avenue and Valley View Street about 12:41 a.m., Campbell said.
The defendant was behind another vehicle that slowed to stop at the red light on Katella at Valley View, but Sanchez-McCormick swerved around the car and “like a bullet went through that intersection at 50 or 55 mph,” Campbell said.
“He didn’t care one bit and what you would expect to happen happened,” Campbell said.
First, the defendant crashed into a Ford Fusion containing a couple and their 15-year-old son, who were headed home following a visit with extended family in Newport Beach, Campbell said.
That collision sent the vehicles spinning in the intersection before a Chevy Silverado pickup truck slammed into the defendant’s car, Campbell said.
The defendant and his girlfriend were trapped in the car and had to be cut out by firefighters, Campbell said.
The couple “spent the day together by the beach at the pier,” the defendant’s attorney, Terri Lynn Tauro of the Public Defender’s Office, said.
When first-responders got to the crash scene, the defendant attorney said, they saw the defendant with his arm around Barragan, kissing her, saying, “Baby, are you awake?” But Barragan “was already gone,” she said.
“She was not murdered,” the defense attorney said. “This was a tragic accident.”
Tauro said the evidence in the trial will fail to show exactly what her client’s blood-alcohol level was.
The defendant was driving above the speed limit, but not more than 10 mph and was going with the flow of traffic, the attorney said.
Tauro asked jurors to be on the lookout during testimony to see “bias” among the officers who responded to and investigated the crash.
She also said her client’s past driving history violations and run-ins with the law amounted to a “decade of youth … with an adolescent brain.”