A mother in California has been charged with murder for leaving her 4-year-old daughter to die in a “partially submerged” SUV after she sent the vehicle careening into an irrigation canal during a DUI crash, with cops later finding the woman “taking a bath while her daughter remained in peril” at the scene, according to prosecutors.

Juliette Acosta, 26, was originally only charged with felony drunk driving for the deadly DUI crash that took the life of her daughter, Reagan Herrin, on the night of March 8 near the town of Hickman. On Friday, the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s Office reported in a press release that Acosta’s charges had been upgraded to murder; vehicular manslaughter; driving under the influence of alcohol causing injury; permitting a child to suffer under circumstances likely to cause great bodily injury or death; and resisting, delaying or obstructing a public officer, peace officer or emergency medical technician following an investigation.

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Obituaries

Plane crash victims include 2 Wilkinson Stekloff associates, civil rights attorney set to join law faculty

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 3, 2025, 10:53 am CST

Victims of the Washington, D.C., plane crash Jan. 29 include two Wilkinson Stekloff associates and a civil rights lawyer planning to join the faculty of the Howard University School of Law this fall.

The associates were Sarah Lee Best and Elizabeth Keys, according to the Wilkinson Stekloff website. They were both 33 years old; Keys died on her birthday. The civil rights attorney was 30-year-old Kiah Duggins, according to her employer, the Civil Rights Corps, and an obituary by her alma mater, Harvard Law School.

Among publications with coverage are Law360, Original Jurisdiction, Law.com (here and here), People and the Wall Street Journal.

While at Harvard Law School, Duggins helped protect families from COVID-19 pandemic evictions as president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. According to John Goldberg, the dean of Harvard Law School, Duggins was known for optimism, kindness and empathy.

“As a student and lawyer, Kiah was known for her boundless enthusiasm for advancing justice for the most vulnerable, and for building community,” Goldberg wrote.

Before joining the Civil Rights Corp, Duggins worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the law firm Neufeld, Scheck & Brustin. At the Civil Rights Corps, Duggins challenged unconstitutional policing and money bail practices.

She was also a former Miss Kansas contestant and a graduate of Wichita State University. During her undergrad years, she was a White House intern working for former first lady Michelle Obama, according to Law.com.

Best and Keys were returning to Washington, D.C., from a deposition when their American Airlines plane crashed with an Army Black Hawk helicopter, according to Original Jurisdiction.

Keys, a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, clerked for U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia before joining Wilkinson Stekloff in December 2021. During law school, she was the managing editor of the Georgetown Food and Drug Law Journal.

While an undergraduate at Tufts University, Keys was part of the sailing team, her partner, David Seidman, told Law.com.

David A. Super, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, told Law360 that Keys was “an extraordinary law student and an even better person.” Keys “was everything a great lawyer should be: meticulous but creative, focused but flexible, professional but kind,” Super said.

Best worked for Teach for America before attending the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She graduated in 2021. She clerked for U.S. District Judge John Cronan of the Southern District of New York, U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and Judge Eugene E. Siler Jr. of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Cincinnati.

Best began work at Wilkinson Stekloff in November.

Cronan told Law360 that Best would spend hours mentoring law student interns to help them with research and writing.

“She was so caring and thoughtful and generous and had a wonderful sense of humor,” Cronan said.

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A Jan. 6 rioter from Missouri who made headlines for swiping Nancy Pelosi’s name plate during the Capitol attack went from pardon to prison this week as she was sentenced Wednesday for causing a fatal crash while driving drunk on the wrong side of the highway.

Emily Hernandez, 25, got hit with a 10-year sentence by Franklin County Judge Ryan Helfrich for the death of 32-year-old Victoria Wilson on Jan. 5, 2022, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and local NBC affiliate KSDK. She received 10 years and another seven years for injuring Wilson’s husband, Ryan E. Wilson — who was riding with her that night — with the sentences to be served concurrently.

“No matter how loud I cried out to her, I couldn’t wake her,” Wilson said in court Wednesday, where he reportedly used a cane to walk due to the severity of his injuries, per the Post-Dispatch. “I couldn’t reach her because of the air bags.”

A sheriff’s deputy who crashed on body camera lied by omission by initially hiding the fact that he was looking at porn at the time, says the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

“Gosh darn it,” he said on footage after the crash. “Yeah, that f—ing really sucked.”

The internal affairs report from the Office of Professional Standards determined that he lied, was looking at porn on his phone while driving the patrol vehicle, and also failed to wear his seat belt.

Law&Crime is not naming him because he has not been charged with a crime. The deputy resigned during the investigation, Cpl. Chanel Martin of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office told Law&Crime in an email.

The crash

His bodycam from the afternoon of Nov. 6, 2024, shows him with his phone out, though it is unclear what it has on. But what is clear is that the yellow air bag bursts out.

He indicated to at least one passerby he was OK. He walked over to another vehicle that apparently got caught up in the crash. Law&Crime is omitting this encounter because it shows the woman, but in it, the deputy is checking on her.

“Hello, ma’am,” the deputy tells the other driver in the video. “Are you OK? I’m so sorry.”

“It’s OK,” she said.

“My brakes locked up,” he said.

She said she was OK.

A 10-count indictment has been unsealed in a murder and insurance fraud case out of New Orleans, in which lawyers and residents are accused of orchestrating “staged collisions” around the Crescent City for money — with paid “spotters,” “slammers” and “runners” in on the take — and one of the alleged schemers being killed off for talking to cops, according to federal prosecutors.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office unsealed the indictment this week and listed charges for New Orleans residents Ryan “Red” Harris, 36; Sean Alfortish, 57; Vanessa Motta, 43; Jason Giles, 45; Leon “Chunky” Parker, 51; Diaminike Stalbert, 34; Carl Morgan, 66; and Timara Lawrence, 34; as well as the local law firms Motta Law, LLC, and The King Firm, LLC.

Giles and Motta are both attorneys based in the Big Easy, while Alfortish — Motta’s fiance — is disbarred.

Charges were first filed in the homicide and insurance fraud case back in May against Harris and his girlfriend, Jovanna Gardner, 39, of Chalmette, Louisiana for first-degree murder of a government cooperator after the alleged widespread fraud conspiracy was uncovered. Several others who were involved have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, including convicted “slammer” Damian Labeaud, who is scheduled to be sentenced in January, and his partner Roderick Hickam. Prosecutors initially declined to release the identities of the lawyers and firms that were allegedly involved.

A man from New Mexico who admitted to smoking meth and marijuana before he crashed through a home, killing a grandfather sitting in a recliner watching TV, will spend 10 years in prison.

Mark Castello, 63, learned his fate on Wednesday in the death of Brian Peterson, 74. Castello pleaded guilty to homicide by vehicle.

A 24-year-old man in Minnesota will spend several years behind bars for causing a fatal car crash just moments after he posted an image to social media showing that he was driving 150 mph, which he said was a “new record.”

Tenth Judicial District Court Judge Kristi Stanislawski on Monday ordered Hunter M. Buckentine to serve just under 10 years — 116 months — in a state correctional facility for causing the death of 34-year-old Jordan Kramer, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show. Under Minnesota law, Buckentine will likely serve two-thirds of the sentence in prison and the final third on supervised release.

The sentence was handed down after Buckentine pleaded guilty to one count of criminal vehicular homicide while operating a motor vehicle in a grossly negligent manner and one count of criminal vehicular operation causing substantial bodily harm

According to a probable cause affidavit, a state trooper at about 1:11 a.m. on Aug. 19, 2023, was driving on U.S. Highway 10 in Sherburne County when they saw Buckentine’s black Infiniti driving in the opposite direction going 132 mph in a 60 mph zone. The trooper attempted to catch up to Buckentine, but the vehicle “kept pulling away until he was barely able to see it.” The trooper was going 116 mph when Buckentine pulled completely out of sight.

A short while later, the trooper came across the scene of a severe accident where he was flagged down by a female in the road who said she was driving a Chevy Cobalt with two passengers when they were struck from behind and the passengers were thrown from the vehicle. The Cobalt was in a ditch and “severely damaged in all places” with an adult male — later identified as Kramer — laying motionless nearby.

“[The driver] was driving and going the speed limit. [Kramer] was in the front passenger seat and [a female passenger] was sitting behind [Kramer],” the affidavit states. “[The driver] stated the other vehicle came up on her so fast, she saw the lights flash behind her and she did not have any time to react. All she saw was the headlights behind her and the next thing that happened was impact. She stated the Infiniti hit the back end of her vehicle, which spun it around and she thought they rolled in the ditch, but did not know how many times. [The driver] estimated the other vehicle’s speed to be at 150 miles per hour.

Buckentine’s Infiniti was about 200 yards from the other car and began to catch fire. Authorities said there was no indication that he attempted to brake before hitting the other vehicle.

An adult male, who had been Buckentine’s passenger, was located near the scene of the crash. He said he and Buckentine had gone to a bar hours earlier, and Buckentine had at least two shots before they left at around 1 a.m., at which point Buckentine seemed able to drive.

At some point while driving from the bar, the passenger said Buckentine “sped up to 150 mph, took his phone out and took a SnapChat picture of his speed.” The passenger said that when he looked up again, he saw taillights “approximately a foot in front of them” before crashing.

Following the crash, the passenger said Buckentine “began running away and making suicidal comments.” While running, Buckentine began taking off his clothes and ran into a corn field,

The following afternoon, Buckentine called state troopers saying he’d woken up on a baseball field wearing someone else’s clothing. He later admitted to being the owner of the Infiniti involved in the crash, but said he didn’t remember anything about a crash. He also claimed that the fastest he had ever driven his car was 145 mph while at the Brainerd International Raceway.

“The defendant identified his SnapChat name for law enforcement. [The passenger] provided law enforcement a copy of the Snap Chat sent by the defendant just prior to the crash,” the affidavit states. “The SnapChat shows a speedometer with a reading of 150 miles per hour with a text stating ‘new record.””

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A Michigan woman faces charges in a crash at nearly 100 mph in a 45 mph zone that killed a 22-year-old woman and her dog and critically injured her boyfriend during a Thanksgiving holiday visit with family.

Nyra Whitelow, 23, is accused in the crash that killed Audrey Hensley. She faces charges of second-degree murder and reckless driving, causing serious impairment of body function. She was free on a $50,000 bond with a court date set for April 26, online court records show.

The concrete truck driver who crashed into a school bus which caused the death of a 5-year-old boy and a man in another vehicle allegedly told cops he took cocaine and smoked marijuana in the hours before the accident.

Harrowing dashcam video of the crash showed Jerry Hernandez’s concrete truck drifting over the centerline and hitting the bus head on along the rural Texas road outside of Austin around 2 p.m. March 22. The bus flipped several times before coming to a stop. An SUV also was involved in crash, killing its driver.