SAN DIEGO (CNS) - A driver who fled the scene after crashing his pickup truck into a car in Bay Terraces last year, killing two sisters in the other vehicle, was sentenced Monday to 14 years and eight months in state prison.
Tony Garcia, 55, pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run charges for the Mother's Day crash that killed Elizabeth Higuera Cano, 25, and Jazmin Higuera Cano, 23.
Police say that at around 2:30 a.m., Garcia crashed his Ford F-150 into a Honda Civic that was making a left turn from Paradise Valley Road onto Munda Road on May 14.
The sisters died at a hospital, while the Civic's driver and another passenger were injured.
Prosecutors allege the Civic's driver was turning left on a green light with a green left arrow when Garcia's truck ran a red light, traveled through the intersection and broadsided the Civic.
Garcia then fled on foot, prosecutors said. According to one of the crash's survivors, Garcia said, "This is a hit-and-run," before running off, Deputy District Attorney Spencer Sharpe said.
Garcia turned himself in "several hours" after the crash, according to San Diego police.
According to the victims' loved ones who spoke in court on Monday afternoon, Elizabeth Higuera Cano was the mother of two daughters -- now ages 7 and 4 -- and was pregnant at the time of the crash.
Her husband, Daniel Jimenez, said in a statement read in court by Sharpe that he had only learned of his wife's pregnancy on the night of her death.
Jimenez wrote that the couple's two daughters "will never know peace. They wake up crying for her."
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