Family members and friends of three victims of an allegedly alcohol- and drug-fueled crash that killed an 18-year-old woman and injured two teens in Westminster implored an Orange County Superior Court judge Friday to give the defendant weighing a guilty plea the maximum punishment.
Jayson Raymond Otto, 21, of La Palma is charged with gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, driving under the influence of alcohol causing injury, driving under the influence with a blood-alcohol level exceeding the legal limit of 0.08% or more causing injury and driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs while causing injury, and he faces sentencing enhancements for inflicting great bodily injury on the victims.
Otto is accused of killing 18-year-old Jayda Jean Feeney of Huntington Beach and injuring two girls, aged 17 and 16.
The crash occurred just before 9:40 p.m. Dec. 6, 2022, at Westminster Boulevard and Rancho Road, police said. Otto was driving a vehicle that slammed into concrete barricades surrounding a construction zone and was found teetering over an open construction trench, police said. There were four people in the vehicle.
According to the criminal complaint, Otto was accused of speeding and driving without headlights on.
Aunts, cousins, grandparents and friends gave victim impact statements to Orange County Superior Court Judge Larry Yellin to hand down a maximum punishment for Otto. A victim who survived the crash also gave a statement as well as the mother of one of the victims who emerged from the collision paralyzed.
Otto was accused of driving under the influence of alcohol, marijuana and nitrous oxide. He is considering a guilty plea depending on what offer he might receive from Yellin, his attorney Michael Guisti said.
Otto, who is barred from drinking alcohol while out on bail, has been active in seeking treatment for addictions while awaiting trial, Guisti said.
Wendy Araiza, mother of the girl who was left unable to walk since the collision, told Yellin, said the collision “has been life changing, and it’s almost hard to explain the emotions.”
In a tear-filled statement, she described the struggles her daughter has endured physically and emotionally. The first thing she told her mother in the hospital was, “I don’t think I’m going to make it,” Araiza said.
The teen had a job at Fashion Island and was on track to graduate high school early, her mother said.
“I am so grateful she is here, but I feel so bad for Chantel that Jayda didn’t make it,” she said of the fatal victim’s mother.
“Now our family, we can’t do the same things, but we’re grateful she’s still with us,” she said.
The teen had part of her colon removed after the crash, she said. When she would take her daughter to rehab she was so anxiety-filled about being seen in her wheelchair that her mother would just take her home at times.
“She’s embarrassed by her limited mobility,” her mother said.
The victim is also grief-stricken by the death of her best friend, her mother said.
The victim who survived the crash had her statement read by Deputy District Attorney Devin Campbell.
The collision is “a nightmare I live with every single day,” she said. The victim sustained a dislocated hip, facial fractures and brain damage.
She continues to be plagued by severe headaches and memory issues.
“Emotionally, I’m shattered,” she said. “I lost a close friend in the accident… Another friend is paralyzed and will never be able to walk again… I relive the crash more often than I’d like to admit.”
Feeney’s sister, Saige, talked about how protective her big sister by two years could be.
“She was always nurturing,” Saige said.
She recalled how her sister “gave me my first haircut,” adding, “She wanted to make me look like Hannah Montana, but it didn’t work out so well and we had the scissors taken away from us after that.”
Even when the two bickered, “She would always check up on me,” she said. She was also the first to make up, she said.
The two had a quarrel about borrowing shoes before the collision that her sister said they would discuss later while adding she loved Saige, who added the conversation still “haunts” her.
Saige described how the family did not get confirmation for hours about Feeney’s death and how agonizing the wait was.
Feeney’s mother, Chantel, also discussed the torturous wait to find out what happened with her daughter. She said she saw an online news article about the crash and knew one of her daughter’s friends was injured in it.
Chantel Feeney said she finally called the coroner’s office and a dispatcher said a deputy was on his way. She described how she “collapsed in a chair on our porch” as the deputy showed her the driver’s license photo of her daughter and asked her to confirm it was her daughter.
“In a matter of seconds my world broke,” she said. “It was not a bad dream or a mistake. It was real.”
Feeney was “full of light and complexity,” her mother said.
“She had a magnetism that’s hard to put into words,” she said. “Wherever she went she was the center of gravity.”
Her family said she had a talent for drawing and a habit of bringing strays home to rescue.
“I didn’t know unconditional love until she entered my life at 19 years old,” her mother said.
Feeney also loved music and her hero was John Lennon because of his peace activism, her mother said.
“That’s who she was. Thoughtful,” her mother said. “She didn’t see the world for what it was, but what it could be.”
Yellin assured the family that could feel their “heartbreak.” He emphasized that they had been “seen and heard,” but he explained to them that in a settlement court it’s unlikely a defendant will ever get a maximum punishment.
“I’ve got a sense that we don’t understand each other about my role and that bothers me,” he said.
There’s a “collaborative component” to a settlement court, he explained.
“But I want you to know you’ve been seen and heard and that the potential sentence doesn’t reflect the loss,” Yellin said.
The attorneys and Otto will return to court Aug. 18 to further discuss a potential guilty plea.