A 24-year-old man was sentenced to 11 years in prison Thursday for a hit-and-run collision that killed two men in Santa Ana nearly three years ago.
Jorge Navarro Ocampo pleaded guilty to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, and a count of hit and run with permanent injury, all felonies. He admitted a sentencing enhancement for fleeing the scene.
Ocampo had a prior strike conviction in juvenile court when he was 16 for robbery, which would have escalated his prison time if he had been convicted at trial, his attorney, Randall Longwith said.
“Without a prior strike we were going to trial,” Longwith said. “But there was too much exposure. He was looking at 42 years.”
The driver of the other vehicle involved in the crash — 54-year-old Alejandro Bravo — had a blood-alcohol level of .15 at the time of the collision, Longwith said.
Bravo’s level of inebriation wouldn’t have been relevant, however, since Ocampo was accused of causing the crash by speeding and running a stop sign, said Deputy District Attorney Mark Birney, who negotiated the plea deal with the defendant.
Ocampo, who has been out of custody since shortly after the Aug. 24, 2013 crash, hugged his 1-year-old son before being led off in handcuffs to serve his sentence, Longwith said.
“It’s a sad situation,” Longwith said. “This wasn’t an alcohol- related incident. This was truly, in the worst case, misjudgment in driving that had a horrible outcome. But this kind of thing happens every day — speeding and running a stop sign — but those kinds of things happen every day without a horrible consequence like this.”
Ocampo, who also had his car stereo cranked up at the time, was driving at a high rate of speed at about 10:45 a.m. on Cabrillo Park Drive when his Audi sedan slammed into a Nissan sedan at Fruit Street, Birney said.
The collision also killed 50-year-old Nissan passenger Juan Jose Luna Castro.
Ocampo ran away from the crash scene, but shortly before midnight that day he turned himself in to police.
–City News Service