Driver in Fatal Crash Sentenced

VAN NUYS — Delivering a sentence that left her in tears, a judge sent a drunk driver to prison for 15 years to life for killing a California Highway Patrol officer who was helping a motorist stranded on the Hollywood Freeway.

In the unusually poignant courtroom drama, Kimberlee Hinman, widow of Officer Bruce Thomas Hinman, brought tears to the eyes of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Darlene E. Schempp.

“We have a uniform with no one to fill it,” she told Schempp as her twin 6-year-old boys, Mitchell and Morgan, strained to see the proceedings over the tops of their courtroom folding chairs.

“It’s an incredible hole that will never be filled,” Hinman said.

Her boys wish “daddy could come home,” she said. “It’s a wish I’ll never be able to fulfill for them.”

Defendant Ramiro Palma Rodriguez, 44, bowed his head and begged the Hinman family for forgiveness.

“I regret what I did and I feel very bad in my heart,” Rodriguez said as his wife quietly wept while being embraced by the couple’s two teenage sons. “I never in my life thought about doing anything wrong to anyone.”

“This is the most difficult decision I have ever been forced to make,” Schempp said.

Schempp said she believed Rodriguez was “truly remorseful” for the death of the eight-year CHP veteran on Sept. 26, 1995.

A jury convicted Rodriguez last month of second-degree murder, finding that his actions were too negligent to fall under a less-severely punished crime of vehicular manslaughter.

During the trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig Richman argued that Rodriguez, who had no previous criminal record, was aware he could kill someone after he drank until intoxicated then got behind the wheel of his car.

“This loss was suffered by the people of the state of California,” said Richman, adding that the father of three “dedicated his life to protecting people and keeping them safe.”

Richman said it was a case of “selflessness versus selfishness.”

As he had during the trial, Rodriguez’s court-appointed public defender, Dror Toister, acknowledged his client was responsible, but suggested the murder conviction was because the victim was a highway patrolman.

Authorities had said Rodriguez could have drawn as little as probation if convicted on the lesser charge.

According to the probation and sentencing report, Rodriguez is a legal immigrant from Mexico who worked for a Los Angeles pest control company and rented a converted San Fernando garage, where he lived with his wife and three children.

He normally consumed three beers, according to court records. When he was arrested, he told authorities he and several friends had bought two six-packs of beer.

On the night of Sept. 26, Hinman was dispatched at about 9:30 p.m. to the interchange of the Hollywood and Ventura freeways to help three teenagers who were stranded on their way home from Universal CityWalk.

In what colleagues called a typical act of helpfulness, Hinman pushed the broken car along the shoulder of the road to a safer location while two girls sat in the front seat of the disabled car.

After pushing the car, Hinman stood in front of the vehicle while one of youths called a relative for help.

Suddenly, a Toyota Corolla driven by Rodriguez swerved across the dirt median, jumped a curb and went airborne, striking the rear of the car.

The disabled vehicle was pushed onto Hinman, who was trapped under the car and lost consciousness. He became comatose and died a week later after being removed from life support.

In October, Hinman’s colleagues dedicated a monument to him at the West Valley station in Woodland Hills. Earlier in the year, state legislators in Sacramento passed a bill naming the interchange where he was struck after the officer.

In the corridor after the sentencing, his widow, flanked by television cameras, walked with her twin boys.

“I know he was remorseful,” she said. “I hope the point gets out to people that you can’t drink and drive.”