Rancho Bernardo DUI Crash Driver Sentenced

A motorist whose blood-alcohol level was 4 1/2 times the legal limit when his vehicle slammed into the back of a car in Rancho Bernardo, seriously injuring a young woman, was sentenced on Friday to a year in local custody.

Brian LaRose, 39, pleaded guilty in November to DUI causing injury and admitted an allegation that he drove with a blood-alcohol level above .15 percent.

Deputy District Attorney Chandelle Konstanzer argued that LaRose should go to prison for five years, calling the defendant an "extreme danger" to society. LaRose was supposed to be at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting the night he caused the accident that left 19-year-old Heidi Wise with a brain injury and other serious injuries.

But the prosecutor acknowledged that the victim's family was OK with a custodial sentence in a work furlough program, which allows LaRose to work during the day and go behind bars at night. He was ordered to report for custody Feb. 27.

LaRose has a young child with autism and another child with a serious auto-immune disease that requires daily care, according to his attorney.

Superior Court Judge Robert F. O'Neill placed LaRose on probation for five years and suspended a five-year prison term that could be imposed should he violate probation.

The judge noted the defendant's lack of prior record, his early plea and his ability to make restitution to the victim as some of the reasons for not sending him to prison.

"It's a terrible case sir," O'Neill told the defendant. "You have no idea how fortunate you are." Holding up photos of Wise's mangled car, the judge said, "I'm astounded that she survived."

Konstanzer said Wise suffered a hematoma, broken ribs, a lacerated liver and was on a ventilator for two days after the Aug. 20 accident. Wise said she still has migraine headaches every day.

Outside court, Wise said LaRose's children shouldn't have to suffer because of his mistake.

"He's the only one who could have prevented it, only one," she said. "(He's) the only one who could have changed it, no one else could have," Wise told reporters.

LaRose wrote Wise a letter explaining the pressures of having special-needs children and the fact that alcoholism runs in his family got to him.

"I took it as excuses," Wise said.

Konstanzer told the judge that investigators spoke with a pub owner where LaRose drank at lunch, meaning he had been drinking and driving at various times before the 10 p.m. accident near Bernardo Center Drive and Maturin Drive that injured Wise.

Wise testified during a preliminary hearing last year that she remembered stopping at a grocery store to buy shampoo before driving to pick up her boyfriend from work, but didn't remember what happened next.

Wise—who turned 19 in the hospital—said she doesn't remember a month before or after the crash.

San Diego police Officer Steve Waldheim, the lead investigator in the case, testified that LaRose was traveling about 45 mph in a 40 mph zone when he hit Wise's Mercedes-Benz from behind while it was stopped waiting to make a left turn.

San Diego police Officer Brian Keaton testified that LaRose speech was slurred and there was an odor of alcohol coming from the defendant when the officer questioned him in an ambulance.

Keaton said LaRose told him that he was headed home after having four "normal size" glasses of wine at a nearby restaurant, and that he also had a mixed drink with some food about 3 p.m. at a local pub.

LaRose's blood-alcohol level was .36 percent about an hour and 15 minutes after the crash, Konstanzer said.

O'Neill recalled his days as a police officer when a person with a .36 percent blood-alcohol level could be dead.

"You are very lucky," the judge said to the defendant, adding that drinking and driving is preventable.

"It's really tragic," O'Neill said, "and yet our society does not have a grip in this yet."

-City News Service