HIALEAH GARDENS, Fla. – Authorities arrested a senior exactly one month after a deadly New Year’s Eve crash at her Hialeah Gardens condominium complex. Investigators said she was drunk behind the wheel when she drove into a lake, killing her passenger.
Julia Vega, 72, was taken into custody on a DUI manslaughter charge at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Friday.
Recommended Videos
According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, whose detectives investigated the case, the crash happened in a lake behind the Vista Del Lago Condominium at 9915 W. Okeechobee Road.
An MDSO arrest report states that Vega drove into the complex at around 11 p.m. with 69-year-old Elsa Pintor in the passenger’s seat. Deputies said as she went through the parking lot, she “suddenly accelerated,” hitting a yellow pole and a chain link fence before plunging her vehicle into the lake.
Authorities said Vega began to escape the vehicle and an arriving Hialeah Gardens police sergeant encountered her “hanging out of the driver’s window screaming for help.”
The sergeant tossed a rope to Vega and pulled her to safety, the report states. But Pintor was still trapped inside the sinking vehicle.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue crews pulled Pintor out of the vehicle and took her to Hialeah Hospital with a “faint pulse.” But doctors would later pronounce her dead.
Vega was unharmed and was “slurring her words, stumbling around on flat ground and (had) blood shot watery eyes” while investigators tried speaking with her at the scene, deputies said.
After being told by a detective with what was then the Miami-Dade Police Department that a DUI officer was being called out to test her for impairment, she said, “I’m not drunk, we only had wine at Cooper’s Hawk,” the report states.
Vega failed the sobriety tests and police obtained a blood draw warrant, the report states. Investigators said the results came in Wednesday and showed that she had a blood alcohol content of nearly 0.15%, almost twice the legal limit.
She also tested positive for the prescription drug alprazolam, better known as Xanax.
Jail records show Vega was being held on a $50,000 bond as of Monday and ordered to be on house arrest if released.
She was not being held at a Miami-Dade County facility as of Monday afternoon, those records show.