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Man sentenced to 13 years for killing beloved educator in wrong-way DUI crash in Henrico

By MARK BOWES Richmond Times-Dispatch 17 hrs ago

Richard “Dick” Whiteside was a builder, a teacher, a traveler and a speaker who accomplished much in his 71 years, earning the respect and admiration of many. “He was never afraid to take a chance and go for it,” his widow told a Henrico County judge on Tuesday.

“He lived life in a big way,” Kathleen Whiteside said of her late husband, who worked at various higher education institutions during a distinguished career before taking a position with a private enrollment services firm in Richmond in 2009.

After retiring to part-time consulting work in 2014, he took on the role of father figure to his eldest granddaughter, whom he and his wife helped raise after their eldest daughter became a victim of domestic abuse in 2016, Kathleen Whiteside testified.

“He had the strength to set aside his own retirement dreams to raise his granddaughter,” Christopher Bruckmann, who was Whiteside’s nephew, told the judge in testimony in Henrico Circuit Court. “He had strength to the very end.”

Whiteside’s life came to an abrupt end on March 5, three days after Ruben Adolfo De Leon Valenzuela, who was driving drunk and in the wrong lanes of West Broad Street, slammed into Whiteside’s Lexus RX head-on. Whiteside and his wife, who had been married 47 years, were driving to dinner about 9:15 p.m. after watching an early evening show at a local cinema.

Whiteside, who was driving, suffered blunt-force trauma to his head, torso and lower extremities. His wife suffered a broken sternum and vertebra.

Physicians did what they could for Whiteside but his injuries were too severe, and he died at VCU Medical Center after being removed from life support.

According to evidence, Valenzuela was driving east in the westbound lanes of the 9800 block of West Broad Street when he sideswiped a pickup truck before colliding with Whiteside’s car. Authorities later determined that he had a blood alcohol level of 0.21 percent, or about 2½ times over the presumptive legal intoxication level to drive.

Valenzuela later admitted to having drunk seven beers while watching soccer at a friend’s house. He didn’t have a license to drive because he was a Guatemalan citizen living in the U.S. illegally, said a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

On Tuesday, more than nine months after the crash, Henrico Circuit Judge John Marshall sentenced Valenzuela to 20 years in prison with eight suspended on his conviction of aggravated involuntary manslaughter, and to an additional 12 months for driving while intoxicated with an elevated blood alcohol level — giving him 13 years to serve.

The punishment was an upward departure from state sentencing guidelines, which called for an active prison term of between three years and three months and seven years and 10 months.

Henrico Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Huberman urged the court to sentence Valenzuela above the guidelines due to the aggravated circumstances of his offense. The prosecutor noted that Valenzuela was intoxicated and driving the wrong way on one of Henrico’s busiest roadways in heavy traffic with “devastating consequences” for two innocent victims.

The judge made similar observations in comments from the bench, noting that Valenzuela’s actions put “every innocent person on the highway” at risk.

Defense attorney Sam Simpson urged a punishment within the guidelines, noting that Valenzuela, who has a family of his own, had no prior criminal record. “He did not set out that night to kill him,” Simpson told the court. “There’s no indication that he is not respectful of the rights of others. He is a beloved family man just like Mr. Whiteside.”

Valenzuela, who used a Spanish interpreter to address the court, expressed remorse when the judge offered him the chance to speak.

“I want to ask for forgiveness from the bottom of my heart,” he said. “I repent for what I did. It was a very bad moment in my life. I love life and I love the life of others.”

Whiteside, who lived in Henrico, had a career in higher education and worked for institutions including Johns Hopkins University, the University of Hartford and Tulane University, and was considered an expert in higher education enrollment management. During his employment at Tulane, he was an integral part of the team responsible for bringing the university back after it sustained significant damage from Hurricane Katrina and was closed for four months.

“He became so widely respected as an expert in [his] field because he had the vision to help university leaders understand what they wanted their institution to become and the tenacity to help them build that future,” Bruckmann, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, told the court.

“It was no accident he worked his entire life in education,” Bruckmann added. “He loved to help people learn. At the memorial luncheon following his funeral, person after person from his professional life spoke about how much of a mentor he had been to them, how much he had meant to them, and how much he taught them.”

Whiteside also was a skilled speaker who believed in the power of the spoken word, Bruckmann said.

“He loved to tell stories,” Bruckmann said. “And his stories were vintage. By that, I mean they improved with age, getting just a little bit better with each telling. Dick loved to speak and tell stories because he loved people. He loved his family but not only his family. Dick could, and would, strike up a conversation with anyone.”

Kathleen Whiteside, his widow, said it was ironic that her husband was killed by a drunken driver. She said Whiteside acknowledged his own excessive use of alcohol in 1999 and took steps to overcome it. He attended weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and achieved 20 years of unbroken sobriety. He attended his last AA meeting on the morning of the crash that killed him, she said.