Drunk Driver Who Killed Coworker When Parking Gets 9 Years: DA

SOUTH SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A Bronx man will spend up to nine years in prison for fatally pinning his coworker against a wall when he tried to park a van drunk last summer, prosecutors said.

Leonel Ortega-Flores, 36, was sentenced Thursday to three to nine years for the 2018 incident, where he killed Jose Cardoso at a South Slope job site where they both worked.

Ortega-Flores had drank four or five Coronas before trying to park their GMC van and ended up pinning Cardoso, who had opened the gate for him, against a wall, prosecutors said.

“This defendant’s recklessness in drinking and driving took the life of a beloved man who was a husband, a father and a brother," District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said. "The defendant’s actions changed the lives of his victim’s devastated family forever, leaving them heartbroken. He has now been held accountable for this senseless death.”

Ortega-Flores, who was unlicensed, had been drinking the beers with his coworkers at their job site on 21st Street near Fourth Avenue when he tried to park the car just after 8 p.m. on June 30, 2018, prosecutors said.

He floored the gas pedal and drove the van into the sidewalk, where he hit Cardoso. Cardoso, who was 32, got pinned between the front of the van and the wall of the warehouse.

Ortega-Flores fled the scene after the crash and went back to his home in Fordham Heights.

Meanwhile, Cardoso was taken to Lutheran Hospital, where he died, prosecutors said.

Police found Ortega-Flores by watching surveillance video from the job site. They arrested him at his home later that evening and Ortega-Flores identified himself as the person in the photos taken from the surveillance video.

He pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in August.