Crime & Safety
Fremont Woman's Prison Sentence Upheld By Appeals Court
Melissa Ho was convicted of vehicular manslaughter for killing a 22-year-old man on I-880.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A state appeals court in San Francisco upheld the vehicular manslaughter conviction and six-year, eight-month sentence of a Fremont woman who killed a 22-year-old man while he was changing a tire on a freeway shoulder.
Melissa Ho, 26, was convicted in Alameda County Superior Court last year of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence for crashing her mother's Volvo into William Sampson on an Interstate Highway 880 shoulder in Fremont on Aug. 16, 2014. She was also found guilty of two counts of reckless driving.
The crash killed Sampson, injured his friend Damien Johnson and severely injured tow truck driver Michael Andrade.
Find out what's happening in Fremontfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Ho was sentenced to six years and eight months in state prison by Superior Court Judge Tara Desautels.
A three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the conviction and rejected Ho's claim that the trial judge should not have allowed evidence that she consumed drugs and alcohol at a party the night before.
Find out what's happening in Fremontfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
According to the trial evidence, Ho, a recovering heroin addict, consumed cocaine, beer, marijuana, the sedative Xanax and two prescription drugs for heroin recovery and stayed up all night at the party before the
crash.
On her way to work at 11 a.m., Ho rear-ended another car and damaged her own car while driving on Highway 880. She called her mother, who brought her Volvo so that Ho could continue on her way. Ho crashed the Volvo into the three men on the highway shoulder at noon.
Ho argued in her appeal that allowing evidence of the drug use was prejudicial because there was no evidence that drug impairment caused the crash.
Prosecutors at the trial contended the drug use was one of a combination of factors, along with staying up all night and continuing to drive at freeway speed after already being in an collision, that showed gross
negligence.
The appeals court agreed with prosecutors and the trial court judge that the evidence of drug use was relevant to show "a continuous course of conduct."
The panel also rejected Ho's claims of errors in the trial judge's instructions to the jury.
— Bay City News; Image via Shutterstock
