Left inset: Alexis Eduardo Ibarra-Guerrero (KOLD/YouTube). Right inset: Sally Alcaraz Rodriguez (Facebook). Background: The area where Alexis Eduardo Ibarra-Guerrero struck and killed Sally Alcaraz Rodriguez in Tucson, Ariz., last year (KOLD/YouTube).
An Arizona teen is headed to prison for less than three years after plowing into a 75-year-old grandmother with his car, with dashcam video showing him getting out to look at her dying in the street before he “decided to take off,” according to prosecutors.
“She was on top of the hood of the car,” said Maria Rodriguez-Romero, one of Sally Rodriguez”s six children, in an interview with local NBC affiliate KVOA last November after the Tucson matriarch was killed.
Alexis Eduardo Ibarra-Guerrero, 18, was driving without a license when he plowed into Rodriguez on Nov. 3 as she was walking to a bus stop to head to work. Rodriguez was just two blocks away from her home when police found her dead in the street.
Police said Ibarra-Guerrero struck the septuagenarian and then drove for several blocks with her on the hood of his car. Investigators say Rodriguez either fell off or was pushed off by Ibarra-Guerrero in the 200 block of West Tennessee Street in Tucson.
“He essentially looked at the victim… and decided to take off,” a prosecutor said in court after Ibarra-Guerrero’s arrest, per KVOA.
The teen, who is reportedly in the United States illegally, turned himself in and confessed to the hit-and-run but was not found responsible for Rodriguez’s death due to the collision being ruled an accident, according to local CBS affiliate KOLD. He was charged with one count of failure to remain at the scene of a fatal collision, to which he pleaded guilty.
A Pima County judge sentenced Ibarra-Guerrero last week to 2 1/2 years behind bars, with credit for 100 days he already served, KOLD reports.
The woman’s family condemned the decision not to charge Ibarra-Guerrero for Rodriguez’s death, with her son-in-law telling KOLD in November, “I’m angry. … I’ve known people that have done less, and been charged with worse.”
Another family member told the court during Ibarra-Guerrero’s sentencing, “He needs to face the consequences that a grown man should. He messed up and now it’s time for him to face the music.”
Ibarra-Guerrero’s lawyer noted that while he accepts responsibility for fleeing, “the evidence in this case goes to show that this was an accident,” KOLD reports.
A GoFundMe launched for Rodriguez’s family describes her as a “devoted mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and a pillar of our family and community.”
Unless Ibarra-Guerrero gets deported, he will be released on supervision at the completion of his sentence.
“The choices people make have real consequences,” Rodriguez’s son-in-law said at the teen’s sentencing. “Our children, our future, must learn responsibility.”
