James Alvarez, right, speaks at the sentencing hearing of Courtney Fritz Pandolfi, left, on April 12, 2024. Pandolfi pleaded guilty to murdering Alvarez’s wife, Yesenia Lisette Aguilar, in a DUI crash. (Screenshot: KTTV)
A California man appeared in court on Friday and called on the driver who killed his pregnant wife to seek forgiveness and change, according to Los Angeles Fox affiliate KTTV. As he held his and Yesenia Lisette Aguilar’s miracle baby, James Alvarez told defendant Courtney Fritz Pandolfi, 44, to look at the child.
“I want you to see her face every single day,” he said. “I want you to share the pain that I have.”
Pandolfi was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison on Friday. She had pleaded guilty to murder, driving under the influence of drugs causing bodily injury with two or more priors, two misdemeanor counts of driving on a suspended license, a misdemeanor count of driving under the influence of drugs, and a misdemeanor count of possession of controlled substance paraphernalia.
Prosecutors in Orange County say that Aguilar, 23, spent some of her last moments alive holding hands with Alvarez as they walked on an Anaheim sidewalk at around 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 11, 2020.
But Pandolfi, high on drugs including cocaine and meth, got behind the wheel of a white Jeep SUV. She had an extensive history for this sort of thing. Prosecutors noted three prior convictions for DUIs in 2008, 2015, and 2016. They said that she received a Watson advisement each time, warning her that she could be charged with murder if she killed anyone while intoxicated behind the wheel. On top of that, she faced a separate, then-ongoing case from November 2019 for driving under the influence of drugs.
Authorities said that on the moment of the fatal crash, Pandolfi jumped the curb.
“After jumping on to the sidewalk, Pandolfi crashed into a metal newspaper stand and continued driving down the sidewalk, hitting the pregnant woman,” the D.A.’s office wrote. “Pandolfi continued to drive down the sidewalk until the Jeep was disabled, travelling a total of 347 ft without ever braking or taking evasive action.”
The couple’s infant daughter survived through an emergency C-section.
“Yesenia’s last act on this earth was to do whatever she could to protect her unborn baby,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. “A beautiful little girl came into the world fighting like hell to survive the tragedy that took her own mother’s life, and the strength that little girl has shown gave her own father the will to live. Words of remorse mean little from someone who knew the dangers of getting high and driving and did it anyway. Adalyn Rose’s first breath will be forever inextricably intertwined with her mother’s last breath, but that little girl will grow up knowing that her mother’s last act on earth was to do whatever she could to protect her unborn baby. Driving under the influence has consequences and Yesenia, James, and little Adalyn Rose are proof that those consequences are not just numbers, they are lives that deserved to be lived together not birthdays spent mourning the loss of a loving mother.”
Now age 3, the child joined her father in court on Friday.
Alvarez said their daughter would never know her mother beyond pictures and memories, according to KTTV.
“What kills me is I can never fill that void,” he said. “And I never will. I’ll do my best.”
“You had no right to take her away from us,” Aguilar’s cousin, Alejandro Alvarez, said in footage from Los Angeles ABC affiliate KABC footage. “Our family has to commute every single day past that crime scene.”
“I can’t forgive you,” said the murdered woman’s sister, Mariela Alvarez. “Because it isn’t your first offense.”
“I just want to say how very sorry I am to you guys, your family,” Pandolfi said in her statement, according to Los Angeles NBC affiliate KNBC. “There is not a day that goes by where I do not think about what I did and how I could have prevented the horrible tragedy that occurred. I affected so many lives that day, and because of my complete selfishness, I know I changed the path of your guys’ lives.”
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