A San Bernardino man made his first court appearance Wednesday after being arrested for a suspected DUI crash that killed two children last weekend.
As 28-year-old Alexis Garcia pleaded not guilty to seven charges the grandparents of the two little girls, 3-year-old Alena and 4-year-old Neveah, attended the arraignment in Rancho Cucamonga.
“I was angry and holding up these pictures so he could look at their faces,” Lisa Avilez, the girls’ grandmother, described what she did inside the courtroom. “(It’s) aggravating. We have lost so much sleep. Not eating. We don’t want to celebrate Thanksgiving.”
The deadly crash happened at around 11 p.m. Sunday on Riverside and Walnut Avenues in Rialto.
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Police said Garcia’s blue Dodge Ram ran a red light and crashed into the white Honda Accord driven by the girls’ mother. A nearby home’s surveillance video footage appears to show Garcia attempting to run away from the crash site in the damaged truck.
“He then tried to flee from the disabled vehicle again. Luckily there was a Good Samaritan that kept him there who called police and when they arrived arrested him,” Jamie Cimino, the prosecutor of the case, said.
The crash site became a growing memorial with strangers coming by to leave balloons and flowers in honor of the deceased children.
Garcia , who is facing second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter charges, was scheduled to be back in court in the first week of December.
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“This is one tragedy no one is going to forget,” Gilbert Avilez, Alena and Neveah’s grandfather, said.
The girl’s mother has been released from the hospital with minor injuries, but the father was still hospitalized as of Wednesday.
