People v. Gates CA4/3

FACTS

At six o’clock one morning, appellant was driving with his girlfriend Julianna Quirazco on the 101 Freeway in Santa Clara County when their car crossed several lanes of traffic and crashed into the center median guardrail. The force of the crash caused their car to spin around in the opposite direction before coming to rest in the far left-hand lane of traffic. Motorist Daniel Taylor tried to steer clear of it, but he struck its right front bumper with his car and sustained hip, knee and ankle injuries as a result of the collision. Quirazco’s fate was much worse. She ended up face down on the side of the road with fatal injuries. The prosecution theorized she was thrown from her car when it initially crashed into the guardrail. And the defense argued she was not killed until Taylor ran into her car. More specifically, the defense postulated that after Quirazco’s car came to rest following the initial guardrail crash, she stepped out of the vehicle and was standing near the passenger door when Taylor hit her car and she was fatally injured from the force of that second collision. However, the medical examiner determined Quirazco died from a deceleration injury when her car…