Jeep Grand Cherokee driver was killed when the then 18-year old Dodge pilot failed to stop at a red light
by Chris Chilton
March 14, 2023 at 11:34
by Chris Chilton
Street racing is exciting, addictive, unarguably stupid, and selfish. When it goes seriously wrong it doesn’t just leave a trail of wrecked cars, but wrecked lives, too.
Now a 20-year-old man from Tulsa has plenty of time to reflect on that: 30 years, to be exact. That was the sentence handed down to Dodge Charger driver Miguel Romero for causing the death of an innocent woman caught up in a fatal street race in October 2021.
Romero, who was just 18 years old at the time of the accident, was racing another car at around 2 A.M. when he flew through a red light and crashed into a Jeep Grand Cherokee driven by 28-year-old Audreaunna Williams. Williams and her passenger were both ejected from the Jeep due to the force of the crash, which caused the Grand Cherokee to burst into flames, killing the driver and leaving her passenger with serious injuries that required hospital treatment.
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The Tulsa Police Department initially charged Romero with second-degree murder and DUI causing great bodily injury but in a trial this February he was convicted of first-degree manslaughter rather than murder, while also being found guilty of the DUI charge.
No sentence available to the judge could ever bring Williams back to her family, but he certainly didn’t sidestep an opportunity to send a message to both Romero and anyone else who enjoys racing on the street. He handed the Dodge driver 20 years in prison for manslaughter and a further 10 for the DUI conviction, and those sentences will run consecutively, meaning Romero was sent down for 30 years.
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By the time he gets out, he’ll be middle-aged and cars might well be engineered with speed limiters, GPS locators, and alcohol detectors that could prevent this kind of tragedy. Sadly for Williams and her family, it will all arrive too late. We all enjoy driving fast cars on the street and having the freedom (within reason, and for now at least) to deploy that performance how we want, but full-on racing on public roads is straight-up dumb.