By Grace Toohey
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles police sergeant fatally struck a 19-year-old pedestrian while driving drunk, then failed to stop or call the police, Orange County prosecutors say.
Carlos Gonzalo Coronel, 40, is now facing criminal charges for DUI causing great bodily injury and hit-and-run causing death, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.
The crash killed Imanol Salvador Gonzalez, who prosecutors said was walking in the street in the early hours of Feb. 1, when he was hit and then left to “die in the street.”
Coronel “is accused of not stopping his truck to see what he hit,” prosecutors wrote in a statement. “He didn’t call 911. Two people who were on their way home from work that morning found Gonzalez’ body lying in the middle of Nisson Road.”
Coronel, a Buena Park resident, was previously convicted of DUI in 2011, pleading no contest to DUI for alcohol or drugs, according to court records.
In the hours after he is accused of fatally hitting Gonzalez with his pickup truck, Coronel drove to his girlfriend’s home, prosecutors said. When she drove him home the next day, he allegedly told her to take a route that avoided the location of the hit-and-run. That same day, is he is also accused of searching online to see if a fatal hit-and-run had been reported in the area, and of driving by the Tustin Police Department’s crime scene investigating the hit-and-run.
“Our law enforcement officers are entrusted with the highest level of public trust, and it is unconscionable that an officer who swore an oath to protect and serve would leave a man to die in the street after hitting him while driving under the influence of alcohol,” Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer wrote in a statement. “Imanol was loved by his family, and he did not deserve to have his story end lying in the middle of a dark Tustin street alone while the police officer who hit him drove away.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if Coronel was still employed as an LAPD officer. LAPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to Orange County Superior Court records, Coronel was sentenced to three years probation, 80 hours of community service and an alcohol program in 2011 after pleading no contest to DUI. After his arrest in the fatal hit-and-run in February, that case was reopened for a probation violation. It appears he was then sentenced to 30 days in jail.
Coronel faces a maximum sentence of six years and eight months if convicted on all counts, prosecutors said.
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