This excerpt is from an Orange County Register article - but another article said she was arrested at this scene but released. HB police discovered that she had plans to leave the country and found her and arrested her in Downey, CA. Good police work but they should have taken her in immediately! Good grief - anyone old enough to get a drivers license and drink shouldn’t need a warning about the risks involved to doing both at the same time.
“”A body-worn camera on a Huntington Beach officer captured a heavily-inebriated, seemingly confused and at-times argumentative Duarte shortly after the crash. The footage, which was shown during the trial, included Duarte repeatedly requesting a ride home from officers, asking “Did somebody just die? What is going on?” and expressing frustration that the crash occurred on one of the few occasions she was able to spend a night out away from her four children.
Duarte had previously been arrested for driving under the influence in San Clemente and had lost her license for her year. But she had not been given a formal warning, known as a Watson advisement, that if she again drank and drove and killed someone she could be charged with murder.
Such warnings are routinely cited by prosecutors in cases where repeat DUI drivers are charged with second-degree murder rather than a lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter. Duarte’s attorney, Justin Glenn, told jurors that since she hadn’t previously received that warning, there wasn’t enough evidence to prove she knew that driving under the influence was dangerous to human life, and that she decided to do it anyway.””
“”But investigators say they found evidence that she was intending to leave the country to avoid prosecution. The Orange County U.S. Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force and the Orange County District Attorney’s office assisted the HBPD in the search.
On April 27, 2018, she was rearrested in Downey by Huntington Beach police on murder and felony drunk driving charges. Duarte was booked into the Huntington Beach Jail.””
https://orangecountytribune.com/2018/08/22/pre-trial-hearing-in-hb-triple-death-crash/