SAN DIEGO — A woman who was driving while intoxicated when her vehicle slammed into two parked cars and a dumpster in Clairemont, killing her mother, was sentenced Friday to one year in jail and ordered to enroll in a residential alcohol and drug treatment program once she’s released from custody.
Paulina Munoz, 27, pleaded guilty last month to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in the death of 50-year-old Maria Isabel Villareal.
Deputy District Attorney Steve Schott argued for a four-year prison term.
Prosecutors said Munoz spent most of the night last Sept. 25 drinking with her wife and her mother.
Ignoring a text message not to drive, Munoz was behind the wheel when her car crashed at about 2:20 the next morning in the 3500 block of Clairemont Drive, not far from her home.
After the crash, Munoz — who has an 8-year-old son — told police that her mother had been driving, but officers determined that the defendant had been behind the wheel, prosecutors said.
Ninety minutes after the fatal accident, Munoz’s blood-alcohol level was measured at .20 percent, more than twice the legal limit for driving, authorities said.
In placing Munoz on five years probation, Superior Court Judge Polly Shamoon told the defendant that she wasn’t a “monster” and that she didn’t intend the kill her mother. One slip-up on probation and Munoz will be going to prison, the judge told her.
”You could have avoided this,” Shamoon told the defendant. “You can never get away from what you did.”
