A 49-year-old woman was sentenced to a year in jail Friday for intentionally hitting a 13-year-od boy with a car, breaking his leg, in retaliation for her son getting a bloody nose in an after-school scuffle in La Habra.
Norma Patricia Alcazar was convicted April 4 of assault with a deadly weapon and child abuse and endangerment, both felonies. Jurors acquitted her of sentencing enhancements for inflicting great bodily injury on the victim.
Alcazar’s 13-year-old son got a bloody noise in an after-school fight Feb. 21, 2018, but the two other teens involved in the fracas ran when drivers honked at them, according to prosecutors.
Minutes later, Alcazar drove up to them in a 2003 Ford Expedition at La Habra Boulevard east of Harbor Boulevard and her other 16-year-old son got out and started chasing them, prosecutors said.
As the two boys split up, Alcazar kept pursuing one of the boys through a parking lot before hitting him with the vehicle, prosecutors said. The boy got up and ran across Harbor Boulevard and north on La Habra Boulevard as Alcazar kept up the chase.
Alcazar struck the boy again with the SUV, pinning him against bushes and breaking his left leg, prosecutors said.
The boy who had gotten the bloody noise joined his older brother in punching the teen with the broken leg in the head multiple times, prosecutors said. They also smashed his phone on the ground before leaving.
Deputy District Attorney Neal Albright argued for a two-year prison sentence for Alcazar based on what he said was a “lack of remorse.”
“The evidence at trial showed that (Alcazar), enraged by her son Michael having his nose bloodied in an after-school fight, loaded up several of her children in her Ford Expedition and hunted down the victim, a 13-year-old boy,” Albright wrote in a sentencing brief.
“She very easily could have killed” the victim, Albright said. “Perhaps most appalling about her behavior is her utter lack of concern for the well-being of (the victim). As a mother of six children, including a 13-year-old boy at the time, one would think she would have (a) morsel of empathy or remorse after hitting (the teen) with her car and breaking his leg. Instead, her response to Detective Sanchez after the incident defending not checking on (the boy) was, `When they hurt Michael, they didn’t care either.”’
Orange County Superior Court Judge Marc Kelly placed Alcazar on two years of formal probation. The defendant had four days credit behind bars.