Background: Police bodycam footage of Julia Vega from the night of Dec. 31, 2024 (via WTVJ). Inset: Julia Vega (Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation).
A Florida woman who drunkenly drove her SUV into a lake and caused her friend”s drowning death has avoided prison in a plea deal.
Julia Vega, 73, pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide on Tuesday in connection with the death of 69-year-old Elsa Pintor. As Law&Crime previously reported, Vega was behind the wheel of her SUV on the night of Dec. 31, 2024, with Pintor, her best friend, in the passenger seat. While driving through the parking lot of an apartment complex in Hialeah Gardens, Vega “suddenly accelerated” into a yellow retainer pole and a chain-link fence, then continued to drive into a lake.
Vega was able to escape the vehicle. Pintor was not.
After Pintor was pulled out of the water, she still had a “faint pulse” and was transported to a hospital. She succumbed to her injuries that night.
Vega was asked to undergo a sobriety test, which she eventually failed. Toxicology results showed that Vega’s blood alcohol content was 0.148, nearly twice the legal limit of 0.08. She also had alprazolam, also known as Xanax, in her system at the time.
In body camera footage released by police, Vega was heard telling officers, “I’m not drunk, we only had wine at Cooper’s Hawk.” She also asked police, “Did my friend die?”
Police wrote in a criminal complaint that Vega was “slurring her words, stumbling around on flat grounds, and [had] blood shot, watery eyes.” After being read her Miranda rights at the scene, she asked for an attorney.
Vega’s attorney, Hilton Napoleon, told independent news station WPLG that Vega lives with guilt every day since her best friend’s death. “It’s a horrible feeling and she’s very, very remorseful about what happened, and that’s part of the reason why we were able to articulate the plea agreement and agree upon the terms and conditions that we did.”
Napoleon told WPLG that prosecutors agreed that sentencing Vega to prison “would not serve the public’s best interest.”
Vega was sentenced to 10 years of probation, during which time she will have a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Her driver’s license was permanently revoked, and she was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.
